all this time it never mattered how sensitive the ridges
in my fingertips are to metallic surface finish,
inspecting the cold aluminum like braille for defects,
how fluent I am in composite porosity repairs, how many
material allowable properties I can rattle off the top
of my head, because I

used to sing the Oh Hellos with you in the basement,
thinking that the air in my lungs would fill the space with much less exertion once I
could watch a rocket engine hot fire with boots on the ground in the
slimy large intestine of july in some remote part of texas,
and at 17 I never imagined that rumble to be like a cataclysm, it is
glorious but somehow at 17 I

pictured 23 to be happier than sitting on a dorm bed next to you illuminated by star-shaped string lights on the walls,
or maybe just less painful than watching your face
change shape from halfway across the country, wondering how different
your voice would sound singing the bridge, and
afraid that my voice will never sound any different than it used to

I have neither raincoats nor kneepads,
no snowboots or hands for fighting--
they have torn and twisted my limbs, Lord,
the body you crafted from the glittering fabrics of light and time is
guilty and violated and battleworn, rightfully convicted of her own destruction--

I come to you sickly and pale and polluted, having
pumped my own bloodstream full of acid and toxins, I have even been fighting poison with poison thinking I’d found the antidote thousands of times--

I come to you with nothing in my pockets and
nothing in my heart but shapeless ashen remnants of things I set aflame in worship, now spent and burnt up in the fireplace leaving it
cold--

I come to you like a torrent,
whirling like mad having ripped through acres and acres
of manmade pleasures, through distractions and aspartame and
sleep aids, through souls-- those that are yours, God-- I have torn recklessly into other bodies and souls of your making, leaving everything decimated--

I come to you like a wild animal,
injured, weak, and frightened, with no recourse,
there is nothing that will save me
there is no one that will even see me in the dark
I have never been loved the way you love
I have never been pursued the way you chase after me
I have never conceived of a joy like the one you promise,
a peace like the one you promise,
a comfort like the one you promise--

I come to you, God,
a puddle of mud at your feet, God,
afraid to speak your name because
it is the only thing I have left,
unable to even utter the word daughter,
and undeserving I will let you feed me and clothe me,
clean and bandage up my skinned knees,
carry me, God,
walk with me, Father

what better day than today--

I can't sleep and I can't
stand the daisy bushes at dusk with their
orange glaring eyes glaring
at my fingers turned robot joints back when
they used to--

feel differently
and I

swear I
haven't changed so much and to
prove it I'm trying to dig the eternity out of
algae green and deep walnut irises stranger
and stranger with spoon shovels made of
shallow questions and polite interest without
getting so bored or
wishing I was--

what better day than today to die

I've tied the limbs of my
spirits and monsters alike into knots and
dizzied them in labyrinths of my own muddied judgment
paved with crushed clocks and compass needles and
they are all so far gone, I am
untethered--

even far from my dear music and poetry--

my soul is already split like colored mosaic glass, each of
a thousand fragments not just belonging but
borne out of some piece of art that will long outlive me, so
anyone that minded could
easily piece me back together in death

how I wish that death were the end,
the end, and not a passing over into
some other unknown rumored to outlast everything,
what more terrifying than that and if
I believed there were a true end I might have sought it
much sooner--

what is left for me to do but
papier-mache my body with my old poetry like a
sarcophagus absorbing the things I
trusted to hold me so much closer

oh Lord my God I am afraid of my own consciousness and the things outside of time

I want a love so deep my soul is sinking
smelling of rose petals and earthy rainforest steam all the way down
memories laced with ecstasy, glowing, every touch like careening into stellar orbit

death is such a burden on us and yet what a freedom
the surreality of losing her physical existence, we don’t have to worry about her anymore, suddenly, she no longer has things to carry in pocketbooks, released of everything she was bound by,
all money all mouths all paper documents and licenses, tracking her, timing her, no more

and there is nothing quite like the completeness of death, its totality and permeating vastness to make me want to fall in love in the same way, untethered, rippling like a stone thrown into dark water,
clouded, something like a rainforest,
pitter patter echoing and fog and tangles of leaves overhead shrouding me from the prying eyes of my God

even beaten down and with broken wings I still bleed,
she still bleeds, my soul--
we have been at odds, and though I imagine us
as swordfighters on sunstricken bluffs in the countryside
she has never laid a hand on me,
only whispered half-recalled memories through tears,
of the hyacinths in chicago in april sprouting like fireworks overnight,
and how I had begged nature to turn my veins to roots so I could
feel it,

of late nights watching the high hat lights twinkle in the tiny apartment windows across the street, and how I had cried imagining the intersection of our lives that are each entire worlds on their own, colliding and orbiting like stars,

of fireflies in august in grade school, of hammocking in my yellow converse by the lake to people-watch, of concave train windows and sticky red seats, of my limerence-born tears darkening the tissue-paper-blue bathroom tile at home in connecticut, of wind of music of snow of rain, my God I have been

a prisoner

I have been snuffing out candles for years, sprinting around
cathedrals with blackened fingertips only for the flames to light
again

and I have grown tired of running

even if there is no love for me in this lifetime,
I can no longer stand the sight of her bloodied and curled up
against the walls of my mind,
with covered mouth and hands bound behind her back,
despite everything still seeping poetry

they have the same bird in texas,
the ones that sound like chalk in the driveway in the
late evenings in september,
like reading nancy drew from the public library on wooden porch benches,
like orange light on the counter from the kitchen window,
belgian block curbs and watching airplanes roar over
the sunken sun

instead it is me driving home to no one from work in clothes that look nothing like my father's but still remind me of his car pulling into our driveway in yorktown at 6pm in september,
cutting bell peppers and tomatoes in the kitchen the way my mother used to over the sound of air conditioning and oil popping,
and the smell of dinner when I let the steam from the shower flood the high hats in my tiny kitchen is nothing like it used to be but smells exactly like hers

and the birds that followed me to texas are in the trees outside my window in the late evenings in september,
hailing a different sinking sun and the end of days
that feel much shorter than they used to