lovesick

I sometimes re-live through her. She takes me through the dark forests, teaches me which wolves are prey. How not to be afraid. Still, the motherfear returns. It never fades, that tummysick, as if I were highwiring on my head. I don’t say this aloud but wonder if she’s portending some terrible fate, the way of empaths & witches, which I’m gathering like dandelions in her sweetfields, relearning what my battered mother stripped.

& what do I know about heaven? The same thing I know about wings, I can’t have it—

& what better way to live than to desire this way? & this is not escapism it’s survival—

I shatter what light has done to me: in my wildest dreams where the given body is a form of flight & in this latest version I step into the wreckage—to find the other side of me blooming toward you.

How is it that the world keeps going, breathing in and out unchanged, while in my soul there is a permanent scattering?

Because I have a fragile name your gaze is perilous to me.

“Just for this evening, won’t you put me before you until I’m far enough away you can believe in me? Then try, try to come closer—”

I am half of the universe will I ever be a whole being?  silence and empty garden, more ephemeral than a cloud I am a speck

“Then he left, and with him he took the sun, the moon, the stars, and anything inside of me that might have been good.”

& how do I write / that you are there too / pretty dust girl / curled deep in your cave of remarkable horror / inside yourself / uroboros / smiling a no / putting your headphones on / staring into your hands / unscrewing your fists / every time you / open your mouth / a white man jumps out / & wolfs you / how do I write that / there is a grave at the grave meeting of my legs / & no one goes there after dark / except with nets / to catch all these beautiful ghosts / pinning them to novels / pages plucked / vajazzled / & while we are at it / how should I write that / I had all your ghost babies / they live together at the edge of the woods / & don’t write home anymore.

there are girls who have nothing to eat but themselves their small spines flagpoles   stuck into soft mattresses in Brixton bedsits        all of our mothers are warnings.

Tangled, tight, dry with blood and defeat, my cunt lays down its arms at the sight of your ear against the lips of anoth er.

The store owner who’s given us space to change tells me the story of this ancient street, tells me about the shootings a few years ago, says And they were all neighbors, says Nothing works, nothing works, says his uncle comes here every morning just to bathe and feed this kitten. I do not tell him I heard the fire from my house. I raise my eyebrows. I shake my head. I code switch I dress switch I silent I carnival I hypocrite. When you say blasphemy, what do you mean?

Effexor: pretty petals plucked from poppies the color of a gentle blush, we slept and slept and slept without dreaming of anything at all. Apathy is the new love.

Can you pro nounce yourself in the words they gave you? At some point, we’re all going to

I remember life. There was so much. I held it all. I held it all.