Brain Matter

"You sleep, but there is no rest. Tripping down the staircase of your ribs, your honey pools on your belly button, all of your sweet. Your skin swells and splits and swallows. And I swear you were golden there. I swear that I could hear bees when you clenched your teeth. They hummed and you arched and I moaned. Swear I couldn't touch you for the stinging. Swear you bit off my fingertips anyway." K.Stark/Clench

"The older I get the more I want to curl up in the blue beam on my living room floor. Let it soak through my hair, my skin, my brain. The biggest disappointment that comes with my age is the way sadness has saturated my life like sunshine through a poorly sealed door. Illuminating my smile. Casting the longest shadow. Leaving even my laughter cold and wet. " -K.Stark/ Here, to the Drop

"There is very little lonely like the edge of a bar at Christmas time. Your friends on the dance floor, viscous and sordid and you, cold and buzzing, with the quietest of noise. Your life opens before you and it is you, at the edge of a bar at Christmas time. How much flayed than this. Your lungs ache from smoke and there is a beat in your chest that isn't your heart and you are aching to be touched but alone. And lonely." -K.Stark/Hark, The Bells

"Dreams are gagging me on my salt again and I woke up gasping, defense spilling out of me like scorched coffee. Love-there is no fleeing anywhere but ahead. Teeth prints down the knots of my spine, the time presses along bridge of my nose, it's weight making it hard to breath through it, making my skin skid into the crevasse of my eye. I cannot stand to you. I've tried, but I splintered. I'm all over in little cracks. Sand-wrinkled, thin and aching, stretched and raw. The edges of my lips are over-ripe. Stinging." -K.Stark/Parched

"Black scuffs where the frame meets the floor-the edge of a boot, leaving. You haven't reached the front door yet, but I'm already digging my shrapnel out of the yellow walls. I won't admit it tomorrow. This was an explosion. You still left me shattered and smoking, but I know where my solder is. I've got a torch on my bedside table, my bones go white and then red and then melt together. You call me three hours later. It's an apology where you say anything but apologies. I've already gotten my frame solid. Started in on my muscles and skin. Lock my phone. Look in the mirror. Wonder where all my gentle forgiveness went." -K.Stark/Calcification

"I avoid haunted houses because my first instinct when something scares me is to lash out with my fists. I grew tired of using apologies like bandaids. That is to say, I've learned there are some things that cannot be forgiven. I will never watch a horror movie with you. I cannot let myself be scared by things I cannot fight Terror deafens me. I find no joy in fear. When you throw me out. When you tire of my silence and shaking, I'll stand flayed in the empty street, daring the dark to come for me. My hands clenched in fists. I wish I knew how to speak to you." -K.Stark/A Family Filled with Quiet Brawlers

“Have you ever been blindsided by someone pressing deep into a wound you thought you had closed? You spent so much time on those stitches, how dare you unravel me here. For all the revelers to see.” -K.Stark/The Bar