#01-2022

i like to think i evicted you from me.

sometimes, though

a stranger draws your smile

or

my voice avalanches into yours. (i try to peel it off, but once it sticks... i'm better off licking a pole in the winter and waiting. right?)

sometimes, i can't peel oranges. see dogs in the wrong color. see them in the right one. tell stories. roll dice. walk into orange rooms.

if we're both in here, what's in you?

if you live inside me, where am i?

you are could be the

emptiest person alive

and

still,

i don'tthinki'deverfit.

toothpaste on the wrong side of the tube, maybe, frozen soup in a ziploc. (soup, that's another one for your side. how dumb.)

anyone's hands on my head turn into yours, crown nightmare-shifting into spiders, with love like you pet a dog and not your equal, i was always on my knees in front of you and drowning in your clothes. holding my breath just cause you begged. gasping.

when my tongue burns. when it doesn't.

fucking inhaler loyal to me like i was to you, stuck to me like a paper wristband (hospital, fair, festival, hospital, fair, festival...) even though my lungs work fine (you'd know). because yours don't. i should've choked you. i couldn't ever. here she comes, little saint bernard. was that it? was that all, then.

heel.

yeah, i like to think

you knocked down walls and expanded the floor plan and locked me in the broom closet. nest like you always did

as a child, i'd spend my summers reading under the orange blossoms. once the fruit ripened (sufficiently for the impatience of a child, anyway), i'd scale the tree. hunting. up in the crown of our orange blossom, i was safe, i was powerful. i towered like the forest, strong and immobile, swaying but never toppling. i picked carefully. it was to be the brightest, richest one i could find, plump enough to weigh it's branch down. shape it like a wilting girl.

i'd bite into the orange just like that. the juice would drip down my chin, run between my fingers like tears. i hated the stickiness. but oh, how it paid off, my labour and sacrifice; prickly zest and bitter pith nestled in cutting sweetness. no orange has ever tasted as good.

i find myself, these days, searching for ways to rid the bitterness entirely.

i find, that the roots are uncomfortable to sit on, and the bark is filled with bugs. the way the branches fit in my palms makes my skin glow resentful, and their song under my soles doesn't sound as promising as i remember. i think trees were made to carry children. maybe to give them something to cling onto. provide the thrill of being at the top, where adults can't reach you, where you're taller than them and hidden from dinnertime.

i find, that i can't stop my eyes skipping over words and repeating sentences. they won't focus. the pages are harder to turn. my fingers slip off the paper, it folds and tears, a page falls out the end and slides under a drawer. my hands were gentler in youth, somehow. even as they tore the limbs from ants, even as they shattered glass, even as they bled. maybe it was because they carried me, up the tree. into the books. they gifted me oranges and stories and security. and now?

i find myself late at night, scalding orange peel that i'll never eat because i can't throw it out until it molds. i only buy them for the flesh. i only want something sweet, but i bought them whole.

maybe we were made to be children. maybe we made a world for ourselves and got so busy building it, we forgot to live in it.

i know decay

all too well

the smell of rotting pork

on a set table

in my mouth

the way maggots

feel

against your neck

their writhing

undulled

by a pillow case

i know

my mother's

vacant eyes

and my father's

decomposed entirely

the hands i've held

twigs shrouded

in silk

too tired,

from a century of holding in, keeping out

too tired.

to do anything but drape.

it is a welcome visitor

i was never great at being a teenager. or a kid either for that matter. these days, i worry that a lifetime of fighting to make good decisions catches up to you, like i'm waiting on hold.

i keep praying for a cigarette between my fingers or train tracks on my back or poison in my veins. maybe it's just more fun to risk it when you've got responsibilities outside of being responsible. maybe i missed out. maybe it won't pass. maybe i should've given into the craving to topple it when there wasn't so much to build back up--then again, i guess i just skipped straight to the sharp end of a toothpaste tube, pencil sharpened hips. what did my parents teach me that that felt milder than a healthy dose of underage intoxication?

the worst bit, is that good kid credits don't carry over to the next part. you just keep fighting yourself, and then sainthood makes for the deadest of adults.

i dont know what i think will happen if i let it go. if i let anything touch me. eternal damnation? very possible. spontaneous ignition, hellfire, etc. (though i think brimstone would go just lovely with the kitchen cabinets.) plausible.!

this is everything i was afraid of. i'm living the dream. i'm living the dream, alone in a room that's not mine in a life that's far too mine, all alone in a hazardously lit parking lot, all alone and they say to assume they like you but i'm stuck with the wrong Close. this isn't shelf stable. it's always i'm not going anywhere until you realise you can afford new running shoes. it's always i wouldn't, until i'm sitting there reading a book of blackened matches.

assume people like you. i'm pressing myself into an airtight container and cramming it under my bed with the others.

i'll never be anything, but i'll be more than you. does it matter? ill cram this paper (proof that they own 3 years, all of my life) into my mouth for charon and that'll be it. cause when you die you'll live, and when i do i'm not coming back.

i used to wish i was lonelier. so i could do it properly. it doesn't help: it's harder to die alone.

sometimes i'm scared you still think about me. like your thoughts'll grow legs and come haunt me, like your neurons'll run over and climb into my mouth when i'm sleeping. i'm dirtied with it. you've carved yourself into my face. i can't look people in the eyes, they'll see it, the warnings you left for them. i can't get it off. nothing penetrates deep enough. will i ever be clean enough? will i ever be clean?

it's wrong, the weight of my body on itself, these organs i carry, the space they take up. i'll never be small enough, pure enough, i'll never be a blank canvas. i'll never be rid of me nor anyone else. i'm a picture album paying tribute to the worst traits of everyone i've ever wanted to see me.

being rich in conveniences blinds you to them,. there's no way for me to pry your eyes open. i can't unlove you.

an entire impression shaped by a beginning. unorphaned orphan. i cant tell you in words why it claws at me, because it was all it knew. it was all normal. normal just always felt like dying would be better. instead of learning maths it was staring out the window, at the church, daydreaming about the roof, what angles its limbs would stick out at. it was a child. it was less. it was more.