déjà écrit, n'en parlons plus

I'm writing a poetry book that will be out in late December.

They'll be 10 bucks or something to break even on making it.

Decluttering,

Unusually hot September

Trying my best not to think of those things

You’ve said to warm the wet ground around the ember

Before you left and rolled me over

To bake on the other side

My skin stretched bare before you

Your hands placed gently in June to tan the hide

No more about you today

Rather write about my own ascension

Into some place where things are softer for the most part

Some place where I hold onto my own attention

Some secret spot you’d remember from when you were a kid

Days full of tossing sticks into streams

Peonies and violets, maybe sweetgrass

Seeing a safe place written--maybe woven--into The Gleam 

I know, I know

The season is going to shift again soon

We all want a love more tangible

What will hurt the least

While I rummage through your body 

In my mind, a feast of desire.

Looking through your file cabinet drawers

Pulling cords

Repeatedly out of my chest.

I am a portal and a castle and a crystal cage.

Dip your head to stoop your posture

To crawl inside

Carry the weight.

Our crimes are many but our sentence is none

Just chopped up tiles placed jagged in some kind of stucco 

Around the mirror I won.

Every day shows me that I can continue to be floored

Maybe flooded

To me, you are early 2000s alternative

The Early November and The Starting Line

Bass lines

Laugh lines around your sugar eyes

I forget to write this

Distracted by distances and movies about Belladonna

And Japanese.

I watch the way you hum when you brush your teeth

In my head.

The way you slide across a kitchen floor with wool socks knit on.

I remember how you like your coffee.

I wonder how you’re shifting now as we listen to the same noise

Divided by wet

I bet you squint at it.

You’re all over my walls and my steering wheel,

The edges where the rubber wore away.

Get absorbed in the flush

Kid krush

And stiff skin

Searching if symptoms include

Waking up every two hours to itching skin

aching shins

dizziness.

The urge to start a band

and watch Home Movies with you until you fall asleep

your messy head full of the stars you slept under for two weeks.

Good thing it doesn't rain as much here as they all say.

You broke my laptop in half on accident

when it fell off the bed,

took my tattoo cream

left a pound on my floor for it.

Left me on the floor with skinned knees.

Rotating selection

and I'm taking advantage of every choice given to me.

Two more weeks, my foot is in the door

and I can't sleep in the wake of Saturday.

I've just gotten used to hurting all by myself.

Maybe I'll always feel this stain

symptoms including

excessiveness and dreams of slaughter on public transport

cereal at 4am

I’ve been keeping them around just in case I’m craving one

I ate two in a row once.

They rot, instead.

I had one of the worst dreams last night when I could find sleep

You weren’t in love with me anymore

and you had changed so completely, I felt baffled by the venom at my feet.

I cried like a wild animal and woke up feeling just as bare.

These days life seems a seamless repetition of dull days punctuated by the incredible and incredible pain

It's "grown up"

Those closest to me tend to try and spin me like cotton candy until I am shaped like a beehive

Sweet as honey

Agreeable.

I'm buzzing with a feeling of inadequacy as I move my fingers through your hair

I feel like I have to, now.

Emotionally deadened like sea salt running down my forehead as I run to lose 20 pounds.

I feel like my body is not my own.

The weight of requirements slip down my shoulder blades like rain racing too fast to catch

it bounces off of my hands instead.

Regulate the way I spend. The way I study. The way I dress. The things I consider funny.

Regulate red tape over my mouth and around my wrists.

Take a test that assesses my association of self harm and death with myself.

I'm in the middle.

Flashback to last September.

Mountain View cemetery on a Thursday night.

No light in the apartment but the pocket knife carries a gleam.

Meant for boys who push too hard for my weak, fragile, spaceless body to scream against.

Instead I insist upon using it on myself.

Everything I have been programmed to believe makes my entirety into the enemy and I'm tired.

I'm tired of struggling to be empowered when the stream is shoving me downhill.

I'll wash up without an identity.

I'll become a vase for somebody to put flowers in.

A vessel for growth and storage. Nooks and crannies to hide in.

Folds of skin to dine on.

Soil--hopefully not nutrient poor. I've had close calls before.