#ghamorah

mother told me to always worship wholly, absolutely i will build these shrines under my fingernails and when i pray when i press the tips together i sacrifice all of me splintered bone and heart out and when i rise from my knees my feet will run my lips will sing about fires burning flesh and i will be terrifying to those who do not know i am worshipping you wholly with my body with my fingernails digging blood trails from your back with my knees pressed to carpet or my feet tangled in yours my lips find yours and sing about fires and flesh mother says give everything and you will get just as much so i praise and i pray and when our fingertips press together i realise my shrines mean nothing without your sacrifices

fold your bones up tight, press them into your pocket make sure you're small enough that when your heart breaks there won't be enough marrow to shatter all of you a skeleton like paper and you still act like you are stone until your limbs crease together on the beige carpet your mother picked out four years ago and until your body is compacted enough to tuck into a wallet you will be so afraid of breaking and so you will lessen your damage by shrinking your skin take shallow breaths, don't expand yourself deprive what you can and hold fast to what is necessary take only what you can carry and with this fiberglass ribcage i hope it's enough curl yourself around what you have, make it small, make it scarce

somehow you're still here like the car stereo told you 'turn back around come back to bed' like it was my thoughts and you did you came back and you said 'i love you' you said 'but' but what but what about your love do you need to defend do you need to set straight but what about my arms not holding you 'but' you said your words hurt, you said, and i can't help but think you wanted to hurt me i cannot help but wonder what pain you thought to cause you're too harsh, you said, like your edges can't cut diamonds and the light you have hiding inside your skin is hurting me god i want you to tell me about being too much you speak like you're dying, you said, like the decay on your tongue makes me vomit okay and i can't help my heart wanting to be buried where you cannot find you hold on too tightly, you said, and i decided these arms won't hold you maybe they weren't made for that and i decided i would wait for the one they were made for i love you, you said, but spoke like giving a penance and i want you to know i've served too many years silent

i know my battles are small sometimes and i know i should be thankful that the ground beneath my feet is firm with conquered earth i am aware of my strengths and the way my body moves and i know my breaths bring me closer to the tops of these peaks you claim are just rodent pathways i can feel myself so small now and when you tell me i have nothing to be afraid of i will hold your gaze i will hold your hands where they are because those words will be a slap across my face i will tell you 'mountains are only mole-hills if you are not the ant climbing them'

it is too much to wait for a miracle so we make wishes on dead bodies like shooting stars find luck in the glass bottoms of closets and we make hope shine bright at the end of cigarettes our lives can be asphalt parking lots and cold metal truck beds hoping to get out of a town we suffocate in but if we drown ourselves in whiskey and cheap beer does it count? are miracles what we want when our arms are too tired to praise? we've seen too many meteors fall so many glasses break over blodied hands too many burns from an ember-hot cherry how long will we be digging graves for stars for falling bodies too bright to burn how are we supposed to continue until our ground is saturated with a false hope and a bleeding conscience when we look to the sky all we see are wishes blinking back voices we send into the night for fear they'll never be heard on this earth thursday night we sat on the hood of a car the moon was hanging high and the waves were stretching to find him you said, "they follow without question" i said, "they trust too much" all we know is the cold wind cutting us and the way the stars seem so small when they shine like christmas lights but make them fall make them reach the earth and stars are dangerous so we shovel holes to put them in so the bright hot remains of them can rest

today i feel like loving you yesterday the stars burned holes in my back deep enough to touch my ribs light me up from inside with little pinpricks of night sky when this skin stretched tight around me i did not scream until anciet suns dug in deep to threaten my body apart today i feel like loving you because these stars remind me of your eyes watching me walk away

sometimes in moonlight we rise like waves tidal and fierce and ugly so destructive we weave our way through the rocks shake this firefly laugh from your chest bright for a second and fade softly back to moonlight send me crashing fast and lonely against all of us we were never just saltwater and sand until sunlight comes we are oceans and boats and so dependent are we on this bright light above us that we forget our ground beneath our bones this moonlight grows no flowers here