#:class b

man in church.

bile in his throat cutting up his breath, gravel in his eyes vomiting something ragged. he crashes into the ground and heaves, retches, soaking with salt. do you believe in god? his fingernails brittle and skid against the waxed ground, digit prints dragging squeaky. planes carrying burning song, nay, psalm--ready to rain fire and sulphur. do you believe in god? it's greyblown granite under his palms. it's cold. through his wet forehead this wreaks his skull, hollow ache like a joint stretched. the floor feels like his teeth. he would wreck them together, smash himself against his father's molars until he's in pieces, in his place as the son, cleanly split into body and blood. his nails skitter once more on the enamel of this beast's fangs, searching for grip. in his own throat, something does the same.

i did not have regrets until you.

 i used to believe that was peace—it was because i was a river. i was flowing forward without looking back. i used to believe it was a good thing.

 it dawns on me, now, it may have been that i was nothing at all. you must live to have regret. i was not invested enough in my life to care. i could dig myself a waterfall at any time and bow out.

 a river runs clear. it runs clean. it fights the paralysing cold. it beckons life. a pool of blood feels nothing. it trickles from the deer's still warm skin, from it's hot guts, steam against biting air. it stains the frozen ground and there it remains, only sinking at best. a lucky rivulet may successfully seek it's way to running water, get to feel the rush for just a second before losing itself to it. orange smoke and then nothing. as it were.

 sometimes the truth only exists if you hear it from anything but the horse's mouth. it drinks from the pure river, transforms clarity into filth, infects and taints. sometimes you need the hunter with the license to carry. is this what you wanted?

 we just started and never stopped.

 i think it's time, now.

 you must understand; i don't regret pain for the sake of regretting it. i don't wish to undo the wounds i've held, whitewash, unweave my scars. your sickly sweet burning rot, though, it's eaten me up. trees decay from the inside out. wet soils cause uprooting (they can't get a proper grip, and neither can i). the wrong wires crossing, wrong lives, it's what breaks things down. a mountain can stand solid so long as the sea doesn't lap away. that's the nice way. the truthful one is, we are balancing on a globe. and we're good at it, but odds are odds. and i'm kicking them with steel toed boots. i'm routing the river over them and watching them break down over millennia because the cold water weakens my hands so i can't dig it myself. i have a pile of sand and burning eyes. that's the fruit of my vigil.

 it's dawned on me, i don't know peace with you. i know a miserable semblance i feel only when i'm forcing myself to stop crafting lies to justify the rage i have for you in the midst of the affections. that's love. and i regret it all.

the way you burn is similar to a forest fire.

there is a burnt part, a yet to be burnt part, and a gash of live fire separating them.

do you feel the heat?

you are sitting in the ashes. you are watching the coal reflect on your fingertips. you are digging your lungs into the dust and anchoring yourself to the scorched earth. iredescent feathers. there is time. all the time.

you're red-hot, glowing, crackling, impurities cleansing. you're split second decisions. you're dry porous. you're hungry devouring insatiable. you're radical tearing off through blindly. you're suffocating. you're going over the rails.

you're watching it approach you're running you're tripping over yourself you're you're you're god get up it's behind you it's in front of you you can't you haveto you're oh

you're red hot. glowing. crackling. impurities cleansing.

you are sitting in the ashes. you are watching.

you are seeking fireweed in the smoking fuel you've torn through.

no

an excitable medium is a medium a wave can pass through only once. these have a refractory period; the time it takes for the wave to be able to pass through again

(fireweed)

you've taken a few turns, haven't you? pyrophyte.

do you wag that tail of yours? are you?

anchoring yourself to the scorched earth. anchor, sinking, cause that's what you need, but there's nothing to hold onto, a heat sink, one you're throwing up into by stolen mirrors and graffiti'd walls.

i can hear the mantra, hunger doesnt control me, you want everything you can't have, like you're praying to it

i'm on your porch. sitting obedient, tail down. whining to let you know i don't care.

i wanna grip your face in my hands and yell that you're losing me, force you to pretend like its not on purpose, just one last time.

Do you even say it for a laugh anymore? Or just because you can. Because you didn't notice, but at some point, you just started liking the way it felt when i let you speak to me like that and you meant it.

I'm not your mutt.

i'm an arrow from the forest, spearhead mouth and forward eyes. i carry parasites and pests and death. i drop them at your door.

i flash something double from the treeline.

i'm a howl in the night.

your walls and windows leach heat, is all. you shouldn't feed it. you shouldn't crouch down, offering your hand just to see. if you want something tame, you get something tamed, because i won't step in the same snare twice, you hear me? and you're begging to be bitten like you haven't before.

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.

spiderweb neurons spanning the expanse of this cranium, dust in the corners. sweet silver lining bleached to shit. must you always understand? must you? want to take verbal aim at you like you're a dartboard, weighted flash of cold needle words. want to be a better writer and better son, son to someone and don quixote with a pen. i die instantly. im nothing, neither, never been. always translating a void into matter, weaving these webs into a tapestry. the woman says to write like a child, to let go of language as you know it, writers' job is to turn it over. use words wrong. that's just it, i use them wrong, don't wanna choose between understanding and understood, it sounds nice (i dont see under the surface), i like the words you use (bent over a koi pond looking at your own face)

i said, (confessed, really, in the dark,) i think you should know about me, that i'm hungry. i'm always yearning. when i get what i want, i get greedy, i need more.

you asked why that's so bad, why i can't let myself have it.

i told you. i said, because i cant consume the world. because people get hurt. because i don't need these things, i need something to long for. i didn't say: because i don't care if people get hurt, because im selfish, and because all that keeps me in line is a fading conscious. because i have flawed fundamentals. nothing, nobody's ever enough, and frankly, it's no wonder prolonged exposure to my core leaves people sick. i poison by proxy. i leave everything radioactive--and i do leave. i don't want to hurt you, i don't want to always have more of you, i don't want to let you become my tinder. i love you, that's the problem, you're my gasoline, i love you so much ill burn you all up. every single one.

i hunger: not human, but pyrogenous. it leaves every victory and loss in equally sized and burnt piles of smoking ash; incorrigibly, resolutely, permanently pyrrhic. I am endless voracity, bottomless consumption, never ever sated. I am unquellable.