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 starry eyes lost

•

Outbound or inbound,

it has been ice:

the words dropping out of my maw like icicles and melted, freezer-burnt popsicles, and undercooked pasta because I was never taught how to turn the stove on,

the words entering my heart like pointed cloves in a festive dinner, infusing, withering, rot.

•

Now summer turns into fall,

and back is bruised,

and you’ve forgotten my beckoning call,

and our hands aren’t as close as they used to be.

I am in a snow globe, encircled by frost and by the sedation of being alone

though there are peeks taken, they are taken from me, and the harrowing beacon placed upon my forehead only siren calls those who fancy funeral pyres.

•

last month.

I cried. and I wept.

and I begged for your return,

begged the sun that stole my frost for a while,

pleaded with the emptiness in my carcass home,

wailed against the beating tempest of employment and exhaustion and people who only know how to be crass,

and when we entered the wasps-nest and when we wore black upon our tanned hides,

I cried. and I wept.

•

and then I am empty.

•

and then it is cold again.

•

and now I am awfully terrified of becoming frozen,

but inevitability has a way with words,

and death has a long wingspan,

and it’s the only way I know

how to feel

alive.

•

09/04/19

•

It has been a rough bundling of weeks, and I have not shared a poem since June. I apologize for the delay, and hope you can find this prose enjoyable. Thank you.

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 forgetting your laundry in the washing machine because I was crying in the bath,

for the things I can’t be for you.

•

I am meat,

carcass and skin,

but I want to be moonlight,

floating pollen in the wind,

the sparkle of city lights when you took me up to that mountain, where I mourned my youth and my naïveté,

the sand between your fingertips when we dance against the lapping of the waves against the burning sun.

•

why can’t I love less?

•

I know that I scald. I am far too much.

•

when can I learn to love less?

•

06/12/19

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,

of her,

on a wall.

The two of you beam at the lens,

coated in the glow

and did you know then

what you know now?

•

Her body coated in your sweat

and her paws entrenched in your back,

begging for what you are there for:

Atollic, parasitic, paradise in the sounds of your mattress.

•

Why do I lay amongst the ashes,

tongue the shroud entangling my lungs,

when I know it will only press thumbs into the wounds?

Her shadows have laced it with jellyfish sting, bourbon baptism, calculated suffocation.

Burn, it begs,

and I do.

•

I know your voice as if it’s home,

but she knows your home like it’s hers.

•

Where do I stand

when walls turn to dust against my feet,

when the ceiling tiles groan and beg to bury,

when the cigarette you hold between your fingers burns down to the last notch,

and you use old ways to remember?

•

I don’t want to be more frosting,

do not want to be cake.

I want to be the cotton candy sunset and the heavy boughs of the blueberry plants in summer,

and I want to be your place to hide.

If you must consume me,

light me aflame and devour the remains,

but know then I can only be dessert.

•

Because home leaves

when it is burned down.

•

05/23/19 (happy birthday!)

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,

because you couldn’t even bleed

to heal the hurt in your heart.

you begged your hands

to open wounds on your legs

(you wanted to stuff them with pills

and pretend your neurons worked)

but it was too much.

you were thirteen, after all,

and you were afraid –

of people, of age, of fucking up.

but you never understood people, never knew how to accept the passing of time, never stopped ruining everything you touched.

•

it was fifteen,

when you begged the counsellor to safekeep your black, decaying words

and she smiled, shuffled her papers,

told your parents.

the year you cried in the parking lot,

and the same where you dropped out of Math,

and no one fucking listened,

no matter how deeply engrained the exhaustion became on your face, no matter how little you ate, no matter if your world was burning or not.

•

you’d trail behind lines of people

too preoccupied to see you gulp down the loneliness.

you swallowed a handful of pills in the following evening heat,

and cried when it only brought you pain.

your body ebbed and flowed,

ice against your pallid husk,

fire amongst your belly,

and you wanted to scream so badly but you couldn’t stop shaking long enough to make a sound.

your mother asked you the next morning if you’d like syrup with your waffles, and yes please, and here you go, and please clean up your dishes.

•

it was twenty-one, almost twenty-two,

when your head is so full of noise that everything turns black.

the year you put a bag over your head, the year you stopped taking your pills and started pooling them, the year you longed to pull the wheel into headlights, the year you almost purchased a tank of helium, the year you pulled up a webpage to get your gun license,

and the same that you found cold lucidity.

•

it was May fourth at two in the morning,

and you laid alone in a bed

that is not yours,

never will be,

in a body that is not yours,

never will be.

with hands that shake,

a broken spirit,

and not a soul to share it with.

•

I hope you never wake up.

•

05/04/19

She lays dormant inside of me,

sickness

and chest cold

and acid lining my throat,

and why can’t I kill this?

•

at 3:30pm,

on a neon sunshine day,

I notched a pill into my shotgun stomach

and laid amongst cotton,

cloth and the smell of your sleep,

begged for a way out

of a body that writhes

and stills,

and looks for ways to hurt.

•

your tongue is succour,

but the wind awaits your eyes

and I cannot join you there.

•

and my corpse lays,

in a pool of dismal mood,

shaking in putrid hatred

and my head won’t stop fucking burning,

and She is with me,

and god, I hate her

but god, I do not know her

and I’ve prayed for any succinct peace

but god, She poisons my spirit

and dances with my dreams

She engulfs my core in flame,

and swallows my soul whole.

•

I am bitter,

and I am so fucking sick

but I cannot let her go.

I’ve never learned how.

•

03/22/19