...it soon becomes unquestioned

and pineapples

haven’t drawn blood from my tongue

in months.

You’re the only thing worth feeding

I’d shrivel.

open up, baby bird, I need pan on stovetop

an excuse.

“You only love me for my milk supply”

we laugh.

you haven’t seen through me that quick.

I’m opaque,

pink opaque, throat full of milk and mucus, no water,

midnight hour upon midnight hour trying to end things

powerless, caged, with broken wings and broken toes.

and why must my subscription to my morals be so complex to renew?

5,000$ on a wanted poster,

take my money, take my money,

but white paper and poor eyes,

unreadable memoir. Nothing but the here and now

because the then, the then

and skin isn't designed as a solo organism, if the swell of chemicals following fingertips is honest. Stimulated, we’re meant to be stimulated.

bones ache atop futon. Feet cricket against cotton, cold. Frozen rivulets trace windowpanes. Not a blanket to simulate the drug-inducing strokes; bruises, then? Please? Stimulation. We’re not alive unless we’re stimulated.

and stuck on her refrigerator was a note, a tidy name at the bottom. I murmured each letter aloud; I couldn’t recognise your name. Fuck I’m dyslexic, I thought.

how the clock ticked

louder

today? surrounded by porcelain

dirty sneakers on fresh floors

waiting

to be paid? Or when your

phone dies

at eleven, half asleep

under ratty blankets with

their head in your lap

and you

can’t hear breath

just tick tock

not to expect anything,

I typed in your password

and awaking after 18 years of dreaming, reality is the same warm bliss of slow mornings in bed. I wonder if this is being asleep. I wonder if scary faces scribbled over photos was reality; if being scared is the accurate reaction to truth.

is relaxation a detox from poison or an ingestion of drugs? The ketamine I’d bloat my tongue with under the sun.

and past car after car, how unnatural. I can’t squirm between them to reach the creek.

and walking on pavement, on pavement for four months straight. How unnatural. I haven't felt the soft give of grass since New Year’s, haven’t sunk my toes into soil since September.

and hard work for a higher education for a capitalist scheme I don’t endorse. How unnatural. I’m two setbacks away from running into the forest.

and I don’t think I’ll ever outgrow this deep grey suit of Guilt. I push it to the back corner of the closet; lapels collect dust and rust edges intricate buttons. I fold Shame, Rage and Disgust, hanging them alongside that untouched grey blazer.

Sadness, Love and Joy follow, until the only outfit I’m left with is stained Numbness joggers and a pair of orange Frustration socks.

and the sweat from your skin tastes like being seventeen. You were my seventeen. Patterned green sweaters and scraped bronze skin.

It’s too cold for sweat now, as I twist on your Subaru’s heat. Streetlights illuminate your skin gold. Your breath tastes like condensation. And I hope to turn the fan high enough for your voice to die beneath it.

“Are you all right?”