#helli fang

if there is a light then i am going to / swallow it. if there is a god then / i’m going to make him cry. (S. Osborn)

Outside, I watch my mother break open an egg:

Last summer I learned to walk into an open mouth: white skylines caged around my neck like a city on a leash. I think of the way the boy spoke—as if trying to swallow a plum—& realize there is no easy way to say close. I've fallen into cathedrals and landed on my feet. I've strung and unstrung a cello with my veins, still beating. Because in the dark, what matters most is how the shutter of a throat closes & not how empty it is.

My mother says / there is no use being alive / without a body / I say being alive / makes me want to burn / down a city / skeletons collapsed by light / clouds rushing ahead like / runaway trains

I will never know what it means to be afraid. As in compressing a body into a bruise & praying it will never be unclenched. As in boxing a mouth into a sound- proof oven, lungs scattering into a crooked ellipsis.