i was myself, once.
like i’ve been before;
a phoenix, fire of
autumn leaves regurgitates
me.
i find my voice in the songs
the river sings,
memory like the currents.
constantly moulting, but
keeping them in a scrapbook–
moments with blank spaces
in between
stitched together to make
a quilt.
i decompose.
sometimes i bloom with the azaleas
in the spring.
We are so eager to find home anywhere except within ourselves.
there are places
i cannot look at myself
even when i am alone;
please don’t
touch me there.please love my naked soul,
please do not force
my layers off, do not force
my clothing off
before i am ready because
this body is the only thing that
i’ve ever been able to call my own
and i am not ready to
give that up yet; i’m not quite
ready to let you in.i am learning how to grow
my own boundaries from
the dust that has finally
settled, and this body is
the only vehicle i can drive.
i am not quite ready to
share it yet.i know you see beauty,
but the mirror paints stories of
pain and struggle and learning and
growing and scars and
bleeding
that only i see, and you can never
own that.i don’t want to belong to
anyone but myself.i cannot sell my body and
you cannot buy it.
i am scared to share something
i have only just learned to
love and care for because
with just a touch
you have the power to
break it.
hands grab hearts
only when they are ready
to be touched;
a middle ground where
nonsense forms beautiful truths.
i am speeding down
the road to
eternal madness, and
all i can see is poetry
on the horizon.
i never learned to
walk. i learned to
tiptoe
around eggshell grenades
on tile kitchen floors,
to dance gracefully
dodging projectile dinner
plates on
Sunday afternoons,
to twist and crawl from
torrid gazes, to leap
out of the trajectory of
missiles spat under one’s
breath, and amid the floods on the
kitchen tile, to land
unscathed.
My heart is anchored to you,
and when goodbye leaves
your lips, it takes my heart
with it.
do you see the red stamps
underneath your own
on that screen?
dismembered mountains
pay the cost
to save the trees.what about the wasteland you
leave behind?
a place called home.
we destroy others to destroy
our own: to crash cars
because we smudge our
fingerprint stamps on screens
while driving.
i am not higher
in my silence;
i am present.
i am listening
to chatter that does not
matter, to emptiness
disguised as words.i am not lonely
in this darkness;
i am at peace.
still in my shell,
comfortable in nothingness,
as everything dissolves
into one
nothing.
lines from the world above
break the surface of the sky and
shatter into a million stars.the north star is a lie.
it’s a death trap; it will
hook you, it will make you
bleed.don’t you ever wonder where
everyone has gone?
following stars that promise
them something beyond return;
stars that throw your children’s
entrails back into the sea.soon there will be nothing
but sandy bottoms.
killing is what will kill us,
eventually.
and we will only know this
when it becomes too late.
clockwork heart
beating to the rhythm of
your affection,
i am everyone else’s
property but
my own by the age of
four.a mannequin child
a dress-up doll,
a dog small enough to
carry in a purse. but
i don’t bark–
i’ve been well-trained with
self hatred and
your back to my face.i bet you didn’t know
you’d shrink– disappearing;
the sun drying you
like a raisin until
you shrivel.
i no longer feel
so small. i no longer seem
so weak.
you no longer seem so right.
you are not my god anymore.
i will run barefoot
across the yard with
my hair down and shirt untucked.
i will breathe a little
too deeply and know for once
the only lungs
i can burst are my own.
Silenticel 