Mountain Cats Will Come To Drag Away The Bones

Louisiana Cypress Swamps

on a night i had a home but couldn't find home, i walked the halls of the Driskill hotel looking for ghosts in the mirrors & the reflections in cocktail glasses but only found myself

i was my own haunting; my own dilapidated house that i couldn't escape. every door lead to a closed hallway, every window i jumped from landed me on the basement floor

the hotel guests, both living and dead, seemed to notice the 'no vacancy' sign lit up behind my eyes--indicating no space, there's no comfort to be held inside this framework

What do you take off when no one’s looking?

Is it your skin? Your hair? Do you retreat out of the bones your mother gave you and hide in a dark forest?

I lean on Camille, my accidental best friend. A fictional shadow of myself that holds me tight and reveals the darkness and softness that I both long for and try to ignore.

The Anatomy of Self Destruction.

I turn the phrase over in my head a few times, trying to visualize and digest the options and their meanings.

Is my destruction small and familiar? Is it starving myself to feel both less and more, like I did as a teenager? Does disappearing parts of my body make me holy, or just full of holes? Will my suffering make feeling love for me an insatiable craving?

Is it knocking my shins, knees, and forearms against the floor or door frames so I can produce the deep purple bruising that's been a comfort to me in the past?