#wreckurs

when did it start

10pm

the fridge: Everybody likes to eat half past midnight on the floor, cold to the thighs, spilled milk and leave it for the cat to lick up, everybody likes to talk about their pain and the inside of their mouths and how it’s so funny, and it’s so strange when I eat sugar my molars hurt so bad it is like agony it is like a piercing saber. I know it tastes better in the dark, when nobody else is awake. You don’t make out with me anyway, though. the Tupperware closet: I show up to the dentist in bedroom slippers smelling like mildew, and carrying a deer slung over my shoulders like a cloak, like a warning, like a detour sign with blood spattered across and you should turn back but you just stand on whirlpool ankles wondering where the fuck the body is. the freezer: I show up at the dentist with vegetable oil in my hair, and I forget I’m in pain, and then you leave and I am lying with leather sucking at my sweaty back like briny squid arms, sun at its high most peak above the adjustable chair, and the ocean with its fists in my mouth asks me if I’m comfortable? is this hurting? is this hurting you when I do this? the silverware drawer: It hurts when I eat sugar, it hurts when I drink lemonade. it hurts when it’s warm, it hurts when it’s cold, it hurts when he leaves, it hurts when he’s close, so is it all just balance beam and hands covered in chalk, and narrowly avoiding the rusty nail between my toes. there’s a nerve running parallel to the bottom of my jaw, gulf stream full of novacaine, Atlantic full of limp salmon. shoot up, and come down, and crinkle up like a straw wrapper in the alley behind the Kohls under the womping, throbbing in your gums. raw and dry, like a phantom limb in heat lightning. the pan cupboard: sit straight up. I can’t feel it but something’s dripping, and I know now it takes years for aliens to come to foreign planets when they can’t feel the life beneath them. my hands are alien like drunk men to their stillborn children when my cheeks feel like freezer burnt chicken I touch my neck. and somethings dripping and it’s red and I don’t ask because I don’t want to know. the cabinet where the aspirin and the coffee grinder are: I wince and curl my lip, and he says sorry did that hurt, but there is a 5 inch needle in my mouth so I don’t respond. says you’re hurting cause you brush too hard. says you’re bleeding cause you don’t floss and I am so ashamed I put my shiny lite brite smile to waste all week. the cabinet with the olive oil and the rat shit and the green tea that tastes like it’s expired: it hurts when I chew, it hurts when I swallow the vinegar you brought into your room plastered with horror paraphernalia, and nugs of weed like spider nests in every corner, you beckon them with your fingers that look like their children. you say we should down it so when we think of each other we’ll just be sick, but I don’t think it works like that. Los Angeles is just like this, fireworks year round and the dog shaking in the doorway cause it sounds like the world is ending. pure hell year round, and by the time you find some air conditioning it’s already melting in your hands, and too late to realize you’re probably standing in the devil’s linen closet. who else would get it this good down here. the cabinet that’s always empty and never clean: don’t worry, I love you. don’t worry, I only lie to my father now. and don’t worry, none of this is a metaphor for you, but I’d probably still be having panic attacks over the shape of my bug bites matching the mushroom circles in your backyard even if it was.

i. With or without you, that is the question on the table. We gather around it and look at each other expectantly, waiting for the other to break the formidable silence. The tableware gleams proudly as the occupants of smooth, cherrywood chairs gulp from shame. They’ve been here before, all wondering whether or not they dig into the feast; all wondering if they devour their own hair before they lick bones and crunch cartilage. With or without you, make up your fucking mind. ii. He’s a virus; he’s put a fever inside of me. I’ve been tossing and turning in bed for the past six nights. What would once have been a pretty picture of a girl splayed out on black sheets, hands grasping at the free edges, teeth pulling at the cotton fibers of her pillowcase, and drool pooling on the fabric. Has since been turned into a nightmare of clammy hands and sweat-soaked nightgown. I wonder how I could get such a sickness up out of me. If I must force bile to my throat, or sedate my pounding head with an assortment of chalky, white pills. There is the chance that he could spread throughout my entire body, take refuge inside every crevice. Burn me inside out, turn my insides into molten candle wax. iii. Why do we obsess over people who fall asleep without the slightest flicker of our smile in their thoughts? He exists on multiple different planes, and I am left to rip myself apart in order to keep up with all the different versions of himself. But how am I to keep up with own myself then? iv. To have lived; to have touched, to have seen your dark sides and gotten lost, that would’ve been an awfully big adventure. v. But to survive, with or without you, is a question I am not up for answering today. So I usher all the different fractions of myself out of the dining hall, and leave the main course to become cold and untouched.

your hands; a slow burn under my stomach growing unbearable uncomfortably warm, it itches but my hands are tied up in yours and you did make me feel beautiful you said it over and over spitting the murmurs out like sugar pills until I started to sink into the words taking them as gospel from the lips of a goddess I crave feeling needed and it seemed like you really required the warmth of my breath and the iciness that always accompanies my fingertips to bring your own heart to beating but I should have seen how soundly you slept without me you were my sunshine you were my golden everything that coated the world in a rosy hue and promised only the best times ahead you were heaven to behold and I was luckless Lucifer but I no longer see myself as helpless nor you as the savior I waited for for you are a storm, a poison to my system wrapped up in the sweetest of smiles and for the toxins we carried on our tongues and fed each other quietly the only antidote is time