It was nothing, to you • But you told me that you would set everything I knew aflame and nursed your coal soul inside of me and I stared at your closet; at your checkered button-down, the way it hid behind all the others, forbidden fruit. I was land-locked, a ship with creaking hull and … Continue reading ‘Fruit Stand’
Author: tofulori
‘Wound of the Witch’
Sometimes, I figure out where you hide, inside, and it is a bullet wound, entangled in spider plant limbs and sappy with aloe vera, nestled in a brass record player, the stylus propped in place by brown woolen strings, repeating it back again - PERFECTION. • and aren’t you? The way you hold in this … Continue reading ‘Wound of the Witch’
‘Smells Sweet, not unlike Poison’
I was an uncertain form floating in gloom, stellar gestalt under a pear frond, and you painted the branch that I loved most and we nurtured and we matured and became whole through the time of our own although distant as dust, tethered through greys and through neons, a singular dot, upon our cheeks, beckons … Continue reading ‘Smells Sweet, not unlike Poison’
‘Three Months Ago, in August’
I cannot think, when your thoughts are all I have, and you cannot think, not anymore. • I laid on the floor in a home where I now float, where you made me touch the hearth, convinced me that stone was my own bone, that my flesh was the walls, that where we reside is … Continue reading ‘Three Months Ago, in August’
‘Body Heat’
It has been cold. • But summer sun has beaten my back red, raw, rotten and skin, flesh has deepened with the lines of the tendrils of light cusping the curves I loathe grab, grab, tear a victim to circumstance and consequence, or a child, parent lost, crying in the sandpits with empty paws and … Continue reading ‘Body Heat’
‘Pocket Worry’
I taste like soot, charcoal drawings and acrylic paints, shoving your red raw fist into your mouth, choking on blood and snapping your fingerbones with your teeth, broken. • my soul is too large for here, and my heart is too big for your hands. I say I am sorry, for loving too much, for … Continue reading ‘Pocket Worry’
‘Sweet Woman!’
You touched her like she was seven layers of cake, consumed her, frosting and icing, licked the plate clean. You inhale the haze alongside her, perch on a porch with a lit match between your fingers, laugh and remember. She touches your knee, you see? That is remembering. • There is a photograph of you, … Continue reading ‘Sweet Woman!’
‘Headspace’
it was thirteen, when you first held a knife to your throat and tried to figure out which ceiling fixture could hold your hanging weight, the year that she called you a chink and the same where he named you ‘Ugly’ • the engravings on your wrist were temporary, blunt trauma scratches on thickest skin, … Continue reading ‘Headspace’
‘The Only Thing I am is Not what She Was’
She burned your skin with her touch, nails drawn across fleshy roots and venom sinking into veins and fuck, it hurt but you loved her, and she loved you, for as long as it was. • She hides behind demure eyes between the lines that you call out, behind song, behind strings, and you taste … Continue reading ‘The Only Thing I am is Not what She Was’
‘Tri-city’
there is stinging loneliness, inside replacement stomach acid and burning cheeks amongst who I could never be and broken bones, split skin within the idea that I was never enough • there is betrayal in it, in pain, in oaths, and in solitude • why didn’t you fucking try? • Is there a difference between … Continue reading ‘Tri-city’