The Filth

I am prettier when I’m suffocating,

Or at least that’s what it seems,

I am full up of ichor and less of oxygen

Because a hand around my neck

Is the best friend of everyone I’ve ever met

I am but the bunny in the snare

Stared down at through a rifle

While I stretch and try to stifle

All the hyperactive, frightful

Realizations of what’s to come

Once the sun is swallowed by the sky

I was too small today.

He said he didn’t do it

I called his therapists office

Told her to talk him though it

She did nothing in the end

He left and went on a bender

No money to be a big spender

And still swears that he “can’t remember”

I’m calling him a liar

I used to call him a friend

I know she’s not a liar

And this friendship’s at its end

I’ve got her telling me the story

I’m watching in real time, his fall from glory

Gory details, innuendos,

Photographs (I’m glad he didn’t send those)

He’s posing as the needy one

While he’s obfuscating

His mouth opens up, all his words are degrading

I read the hidden truths

All those b.s. “I love yous”

you cannot love an object,

Can’t make a girl into a project

Can’t mold her,take her, manipulate her

And ask and ask and ask for

“Favors”

You say that she’s your savior

But you treat her like a pawn

Guilt her, break down the castle you built her

Fill her, kill her, fill her, kill her

You are not a lover, just a taker in the end

Take a girl and break her

cause she wouldn’t bend

Snap her underneath you

Taking succor in the view

Don’t mind the absent staring

Cause after you’ll talk about getting married

She’s buried in the dirt behind her eyes

He is not so shy

He’s got one eye on his back

And one eye on the prize

Take a girl and eat her

Then tell a lie tell a lie tell a lie

And here I sit disgusted

Having this discussion

How’d you go from sweet

To malevolent and judgin’

I’m taking down your sins

Count em’ down

Making sure I know

This is all over now

I knew you the longest

I knew you first

I knew her later

But I’ll put you in a hearse

Cause I don’t hang with

Men who act like little boys

Turning innocent

After breaking all his “toys”

I don’t stay connected to takers

Who make a girl go against her nature

You can swear to me all you want

Blame your memory, blame your mom

But you’ve known me long enough

To know I can call your bluff

So I force it all out of you

Just to get her closure

And it wont bring us closer

In the end, you’re just a taker

You’re so full of anger

But it’s no one else’s fault

That you took and took

And blamed her

I am a child with an ache

You broke me open to eat your cake

Strawberry red intestines

That from my suffering, started to bake

You suck on the fat like I’m veal

Peeling me apart, searching for your meal

Poison teeth, eating right through me

My disfigurement now proof

That I’m the monster

While you’re chewing on my stomach lining

From your reclining chair

It was never me, but

“who are they gonna believe?”

Of the fatty layers under all my skin

Covering my waning muscles

All sinews and twitching fibers

Wouldn’t you love to take a bite

Cut me open

And take a slab of this

Drink me down

To fuel your poison avarice

I know you love the taste

Drunk and bloody-faced

Mouth slick with fat

Salivating

I know you love the taste

Salted to tenderized

Ready for the frying

Markered up

With perforations

Ready for sweet

Knife ministrations

Peel the meat from the bone

Sell it better that way

Luxury poultry with an upcharge

Aging in the back

Salt me down again

Keep me drying out

I’m aging like fine wine

Salted down and dried

I’m degloved

Seeping oil

Rubbed down in spice

A little sugar

But nothing nice

Keep the lights out

Fight the night

I know it’s wrong

But it feels so right

Sip from the cup

Honeysuckle sweet

Cherry ice

Sour speckled egg brown eyes

Lost in translation

It’s feverish, open wide

Filthy and brittle

Out witted and in the middle

Sentimental choices

Belittle the voices

I know it’s the same in the end

If not to break it will bend

The less is more

It will cleanse

Free the wiles of the single organisms

It’s not special but it is sweet

Put out a plate of food to eat

Nibble soft and swallow tough

Love is in and love is lost

Welcome thoughts and forgiven rauck

it’s a game all the same

Love and life and fame

Enshrined and paving the way

With avarice

Slept in

Vanishing

Cold sweat

Empty nest

Call it what you want

It’s love inside a burning cage

Frayed edges

Simple games

Give and give

And give and take

Pray the love and lies away

Kiss the knees

And brush away the leaves

It’s wet outside

So keep it clean

That waits

For the fruit to ripen

And then over-ripen

So he can take succor

And salvation

In the

Sticky and sickly sweet

Flesh

The way the skin of it gives out

With the softest touch,

Fibrous innards

Smelling faintly of wine

Spilling out, from between his fingers

Near rotten and starting to ferment

Pretty girl Tight grip You wonder "why's she look so different?" She's so old So big Real mature Look at how she walks Tall, so sure You avert your gaze She looks like a dying bird The curves of childlike softness Are gone And so is your wet mouth You're disinterested Now that she's not a child.

I am held in place by over burdened shoulders Of which I cannot hang on fishing line And as my skin bursts and fatty bits of me Melt into grease puddles on the floor I think about my wounded face The four tined fork scraping at the enamel inside Sore gums and a copper taste on my tongue, Perhaps I should have ripped it out And used it in my defense But we are our own worse enemies, So now I am being reduced to char And fixings for an oil lamp. I wonder if you'll eat me after and if you'll like the taste I wonder if you'll be satisfied with how I light the way How did I get here again?

I string my shoulders On meat hooks in my bedroom Lose the weight, A simple gesture Staple my spine back together.

I crawl out from my lung cavity Tiny and windswept Prick my lips Taste the blood Ignore the flood Keep my skin together, Pull myself until I sag Like stretched sugar in a candy store window. All for something Or all for nothing All for someone Or all for no one All in the name of patience At the price of being alone

For as long as I can remember there’s been someone there to hurt me.

A daycare workers threats, a physically abusive primary school teacher, schoolyard bullies, adults and children alike, family members. Visceral memories of being forcibly held under water, having my hair pulled, pushed against a wall, pinned down on the floor, frequent humiliations, being told “I wish you were never born”, before I even knew who I was in life.

I wrote this book collecting new and old works, things I've had in my head for years or for hours. Perhaps at a different time I would say this book is a great big “FUCK YOU” to everyone who thought it was fun to treat me like a parasite, a punching bag, a rabid dog; but these days I just say, I wrote this for me and I no longer have the patience to ask for permission or worry about my trauma being ‘unacceptable’. Simply put, I have feared speaking my mind and I no longer have that luxury. I am haunted by my memories, and I needed somewhere to put them.

Last year I went through a horrific depressive episode, and not the cutesy ‘manic pixie dream girl’ kind of depression. More like, sleeping with a knife in my bed to hurt myself with and being unfathomably suicidal, for MONTHS. It was a pain I hadn’t felt to such an extent, and when I finally saw some light, I started to heal. I wrote nearly every day then, crying into my pillow and posting my ideations to tumblr while I wished and waited to feel good again.

I got an important diagnosis during this time too, a blessing, truly. It’s a scary one, but more so without help or knowledge. I am grateful to have people in my life who don’t look to me like a monster, appreciate my being and my company.

I kept writing, purging myself, listening to my favorite music, and starting to enjoy my life again. This book is scary, it’s macabre, violent, lovely, transformative, explorative, honest.

Took a long time for me to get where I am and it’s still a struggle.

I’m proud of this, I am my most raw in this, I am no longer the little teen who thought I could just avoid it all to heal, I delved so deep into myself even I was surprised at the outcome.

Even if no one ever reads it, I am grateful for this book.

It is physical proof I survived, and I finally stopped blaming myself for everything.

this book is physical proof I survived, and that I stopped blaming myself for everything