if i hate myself, just look at the skin of my palms
about the matter of my skin, and the translucent hair
if and when my eyes waver, softly, just for a moment

you, you, you don't even

i am all a mess of words and fragrance that doesn't have a label or a real taste. just a sticky, angry smell. i am all the frayed socks, every ragged hole and i keep ******* the circulation from your toes.

it's thursday, the children are doing that whooping and hollering like they never expressed a real pain between then and right now. where's the pain of tomorrow? do you think their baby fat has ever trembled in the face of all the evers and wonders and hows, all the wretched aches of "not yet" and "maybe"?

that seems a simple question, and all the dreadful needs come wheedling out of the woodwork like maggots. i can taste them, their want and flush and wish and scrape and oh for the love of all that is holy, i would like to be the plaque on your left-hand incisor. let me crawl up inside your cavities, taste all your stagnant air and need like maybe i'll save you if i can just fill my lungs up fast enough with you and all your rot.

it's only a little bit like a toothache when your
eyes well over in that muted, melancholy way.

i had so sorely forgotten this place
the anxiety, fresh like a cresting wave
that languid boil in my throat
the therapist tells me that I have to take deep breaths and
hold myself where it burns, tenderly
but i always end up choking myself.

limp attempts to strangle the fervent clamor
my brain revolves a harrowing dialogue,
masquerading as novel thoughts

this afternoon i stood, back to the sweat-slicked masses
my own mess of rank and fear dripping from brow to navel
tears vaporizing mid-air before they could season the eggs

and i realized in the most painful way
that the pallid, grease-burned hands stroking my neck
in some strange semblance of comfort
might as well be his,



they should have cremated him.
i ache to hold reverence on the same ground in which he rots.



you were humming between my legs while i twitched and gasped and then i burst into tears. wracking sobs, really, the kind that make my chest hitch and your mouth kept hitting my ***** bone while i shook, orgasming and crying.

i want to say a lot of things about the why, how and of course and to be honest with you and i think

but my lips are too swollen with his death. his bloated corpse is hiding in my throat, slicing up my insides, and i'm so ******* allergic, can't you see in the ways my hands flail and my eyes bulge?

all the lengths of my skin are boiling,
your validation a soothing salve
for a moment, before dissipating in my wretched heat

can't you see that this all fell into place decades ago? from the very first time you had somewhere better to be, someone else who needed your time and space, i was already burning.
so small and slight, trembling just a little bit.

it was you you YOU

all of you, now dead and rotting or just as good as




i refuse to join you.

i bought myself steel-toed boots for
christmas like it would matter
as if i could kick things like paranoia, fear and vulnerability

my whole head is making this strange, dissonant noise
it feels kind of like pressure building, by surprise

because i'm going, going, going with my
hands touching all of the things

i thumped my corroded heart onto the table and asked if he wouldn't
mind sitting with it for a while

did i know then that his body moves just like theirs?

i have blades in my palms walking home
despite how i interpret my murmuring heart
mostly i think it's reminding me to live, i think
it's especially easy to forget

i'm choking, go ahead and tell me how much you understand it

i have blades in my palms, the boots and buttons up to my neck
i can taste their eyeballs anyway and the rotting is sand
it's getting underneath my toenails now, stop just a second
the boots and the buttons might as well be silk
the way their bodies are closing in feels like absolute reliable death
i'm thumping and shivering and their voices
the way everything shifts a little as my hands tighten around the mace makes me wonder if i had ever been safe to begin with because it seems like i've only ever been trembling in anticipation of your violence

my father is strong and firm and knocks at the window in the way that punches a small, undeniable hole directly through my windpipe

there are a lot of things about this canal that the probe cannot understand

clearly evident in the shift in your spine as the door slams behind you

did i know at eight years old that footsteps would come to sound like fists to me? i always knew the tenor of arguments would send me over, but at this point i've lost count of the ways through which my environment stands to strangle me

how many voices eked out, slowly do you have to
miss before you'll hear me?

they might as well be constricting my limbs on the spot with the
ways they graze my hot, sweating flesh

does it count as purgatory if you're burning from the inside?

you make me ******* sick

with your vowels, hesitations and ******* excuses

******* and all of your unwavering moral righteousness

you ******* wealthy white man

how have i let myself believe you
could taste the terror dripping down my thighs?

like sticky nectar

******* and your misguided Nuture
i am last to grow under your warped hands of silk
and first to shrivel under guise of instability and the dreaded-

" b o r d e r l i n e "

the only line i toe, my dear, is your continued worth

the ******* think, you're not replaceable?

the words i spit to your mope last night might
as well be metal in my mouth

you don't do a **** thing for me