if she asked for you again one day,

would I be enough for you to stay?

•

despite my quirks and neuroses,

sweet anxieties and fruitful fear,

blame my heart for this internal betrayal

but I want to be yours,

want, want, and will I be wanted too?

•

she is more: she speaks so surely, her laugh is cherry juice, she can do things my body fails me at,

and she was good to you, you said,

but you just weren’t ready.

•

and now I claw at my brain –

why didn’t I ask?

were you not ready then

or ever?

you tell me that you love me,

and I trust that you could not lie to me,

and I wait for you to.

I am gripping tightly to the thin hold I have

(on you, the world, any reason to pretend that I am something worth being)

and expect it to wind against your throat, against my will,

for you to hold that against me.

and how could you not?

and how could you?

and how could I think I deserve anything more than your disgust?

•

the air is cold,

that much is true,

tree’s heavy boughs of green and birds flying through,

and my throat closes into itself,

and I fear that these celestial feelings in my chest

might collapse on themselves

twist me like roughage, like vines, like rope,

engulf it all, hungry and feral and free,

expand towards my shaking hands and my constricted tongue,

and if I hurt you,

fuck,

if I hurt you?

•

I already cannot forgive myself

for who I am,

for how I became this,

for the people I let do this to me,

for blaming anything else but them,

for the fucking universe for doing this to me,

for not blaming myself enough,

for not holding you close,

for pushing you too far,

for being incapable of letting you in,

•

or letting you go.

•

so if she asked for you again one day,

and you said okay,

and I was not enough,

I would hope she is good to you again,

and that you are ready.

•

just not for me,

never for me

and once again,

I will find myself

to blame.

•

04/28/2024

•

There’s truly not enough therapy in the world to heal a certain amount of internal image wounding.

When petals turn to talon,

and your roots, once entangling my limbs,

twist inwards and impale the flesh betwixt,

where do I roost?

The moon can shine milk and stardust on skin of dappled violets,

where the sweet nectar of a creature so contorted lays christened in bars of violent barb,

wings lain in a pattern like a seraph’s charge,

and the beast cannot burn the burden without also boiling this blood.

•

The trap was set with nooks of autumnal whispers, wisps of hope and defiance of fate,

the echolalia of cotton fear beading upon our foreheads pressed together,

underneath your grandfather’s cold leather coat,

in the parking lot of a layman’s god,

at eleven fourteen o’clock

in a town you bared your teeth at,

sweet promises of a man I haven’t met before

holding his hand out with concealed rot in marrow,

telling me it was okay to be here.

•

But if you were to hurt me,

why not kill me instead?

•

Pin me against the tree you deign to commit treason with,

coat your edge with the juice I held inside fibreglass veins,

sink tooth into a neck not surprised of this judgement call,

make the execution righteous and hard, hollow and gaudy, canine and meteoric

and tie my paws from the twine nooses you hang your hurt from

adorned in pearl and silk,

and let my corpse wash in another man’s summer miasma.

•

As I lay in fetid casings of bourbon gunpowder,

I beg for more,

so that this whimpering conversion of love into malignancy

can end with desaturated, shade-kissed furrowing,

and not this

not this.

•

05/15/2023

•

It hurt so much, sometimes I forget to feel it.

she told me that it’s like this,

“your knees are broken

from the heights you have fallen,

and your addiction to attention

cannot be cured with cards or condolences.

these holes in your lungs

plugged with smoke and tongues

are terminal, dear,

an accidental suicide note

carved in your corpse.

•

“and your spine melts like glue,

the heat of the expectation

fusing your shins into part of the floor you kneel upon,

and you beg me for benzos with belief on your breath

that you belong to boys;

to their sunken, rounded eyes

that fondle your flesh with distanced disdain,

with inconsiderate drool swinging from their lips that hang off their dogged faces,

that they hope to ensnare you with $7.99 nectar

and a hooked arm, leaned away,

claws in the small of your back,

possession.

•

“that is all you’ve ever known.

so you come to me,

throat-deep in the rot,

for cosmic absolution and romantic resolution,

so that the victim you have become can stay the victim that you are?

it must be tiring reliving the same man through different faces and hands,

and receding away when you recognize the unfamiliar.”

•

I laugh in the chair in the room in the clinic,

ask her to refill the prescription,

close the door behind me,

and love another who tastes

just like him.

•

??/??/2022

so it is thumb tacks in your throat.

barely could breathe already

but now it’s severance

and cold, hungry rage.

•

why

all these falsehoods?

•

a spoken word is strong

against a wavering heart,

though,

I am not worth even that

am I?

•

bittersweet,

how your tongue tastes:

desperation,

coating every syllable you drawl

in neutrality and indifference,

and how could you forget?

he’ll never love you.

he never did.

•

but I did.

foolish of me,

in the end.

•

forgive?

forget.

•

2/11/19

it is deep

cavernous and cold

against my bones and my soul

rivets against pure gold

quiet longing and quiet despair

crept into skin

as thin as wire

bare-chest and alone

matched two, a pair

left once, burnt twice,

quiet despair

let him in, she begs

pure hope and pure faith ensnared

but he bristles and laughs

burnt rubber, no care

when will the fool learn,

time after time

left to devices

she has yet to unwind

spurn both time and space

find a place to grieve

within herself she will find

affection and trust to retrieve

enter this pit of pure black,

where she smiles from her to you

enter with care

and join the depth too.

•

12/30/18

i. you’ve taught me darkness,

sour pain and rotten tongues laid bare

silence, then a sudden cacophony

ringing and the smell of burnt caramel

and get your fucking hands off of me,

you do not own me anymore.

•

you called for me,

begged, spurned everything for my favour

and I felt the shards

of what you left behind

twist and dance inside of me.

you held my past in your palms,

and bargained it for my future

and I was never good at business,

but I knew I needed

this.

needed closed blinds and coffee holders

and bare hearts and look at me from across the room, and hold me in public and don’t fucking act like I don’t mean anything and why the fuck couldn’t you do that for me

•

your caramel used to be sweet,

but with the flame that licked my feet,

it has turned black and impossible to eat.

•

ii. you are a porch light on the shoreline,

moths against your back

and seawater rinsing your toes,

where I float, head under,

waiting to succumb.

•

at first, it was a jolt –

a tense brush against,

gazing, alcohol wetting our teeth,

share a seatbelt and a sofa.

now, it is a current,

streaming within and without,

and you know I am insecure,

and I know you are too,

but we know we are here,

and this is reason enough to be,

and we share the same seatbelt

under the same car roof.

•

your hands are home.

I can’t go back.

•

12/27/18

I am the skip of a disc,

a song stuttering and chirping

caught toe in carpet,

layer of ice on concrete,

wrapped ankles in lace

and hands holding wrists in place

and I am a mistake.

•

you hold me like I am complete.

•

I am a broken television,

crisp vision turned sour

and static burns the ledges

where I seep from,

when I sleep standing,

leave my corpse,

end up on the floor,

and begin anew

with the rise of the lights

and I am a mistake.

•

you hold me like that’s okay.

•

I can’t hold onto anything,

my fingers loosen

and my claws recede

and my hands swelter and pulse,

everyone leaves, eventually.

no amount of thick, black noise

escaping my tongue

could ever change that.

fate, god, nature and destiny –

intertwined in the way

that the world holds me,

and my struggle is fading.

•

you hold me

even though I don’t know

how to do the same.

•

12/23/18