your dead fossil husband

i wilfully poison the air i breathe. i betray my body with every meal i skip. i pick on my skin until it spits out the dirt i trapped under its softness. i cloud my mind intentionally. i stumble over pants that were never meant to fit. the corners of my mouth crack with every yawn. irrationality rules my behaviour. i watch myself run into the walls i‘ve built myself. nose bloody, sweat trickling down a hunched back. when will i realize the agency in my actions? when will i learn to take on the responsibility for my tender existence?

my ribcage hurts. pressure stuck in my bones, deep in the skeletal shell of my heart and my lungs. a throbbing fist. two heaving sponges. my mind leaning out of consciousness. i can feel the pull of her stars on my tongue. a blood-red toenail of a moon mocks me on an ink-blotched sky. before i commit to oblivion, i dare a look out of the greasy stairwell window. beyond the lit up neon sign of a social service facility i try to imagine a future. my ribs ache in response. a tiny fly joins a loose eyelash on my cheek, doubles the itch i struggle to ignore. i close dry eyes and then i look again. there’s shapes now. blurry, obscured by the immediate reality of the buildings across the canal, but visible in the realm of possibilities. a yawn creeps up my throat and breaks through my clenched jaw. later, when i close my eyes and encroach upon the heavy darkness, the shapes reappear. painted on the insides of my eyelids they follow me into my dreams.

she clenches her love tight in her fist. the white of her bones bleeds through the skin on her knuckles, her wrists strained, tightly locked. her violence: a chrystalline purity. she keeps her soft parts hidden, next to the place where she‘ll treasure yours. her awareness crawls beyond the visible. she protects with a martyr’s fierceness. she loves too hard for the frailty of her bones. so she holds on tight to what she can grasp.

the grindstone‘s teeth gnaw at my naked bones until their molecular structure surrenders and to dust they return. I am one with the stains I leave on cushions. A shadow of doubt, unfiltered longing, gaping lashes on lifeless eyes. There’s an army of men marching over my grave in unbothered, staccato steps. The heroes of my imagination, inhabiting bodies I spent a lifetime trying to control. Epiphanies muffle my moans. Spit turns to sticky residue clinging onto an upper lip reluctant to form any kind of meaningful stubble.

she’s a biter, raw gums, feisty in the way she shows her love. no room for tenderness, there’s something animalistic in the way her shadows creep through her words. enigmatic apprehension, too much white in her eyes when she dares to speak. she buckles under touch, kicks when you come too close. only tranquilized, in a state that’s half sleep, half waking dream-state is when she’ll inch closer, her crudeness concealed by a child-like chrysalis, finally softened around harsh edges.

memories of bite-marks, the remnants of a nightmare. one on my right shinbone, just below the knee. one on my thigh, on the inside, diagonal to the one below. one on the outside of my left thigh. still bleeding. the two half-moons clearly shaping the imprint of a man’s teeth. the memory of a mob of people, yelling at me in a foreign language, angry sounds tumbling out of their grotesquely crooked mouths. their hands clawing at my skin, me desperately trying to crawl upwards, to escape their hungry hate. delirious from pain and fear afterwards. a stumble through a mesa, hands reaching out towards the dry desert weeds. hot flashes pulsing from the marks on my legs. wounds too small for the red pain they cause. a fever, desperation. a call for my mother. deep shame meets her worry. „what happened?“ she asks. „don’t worry,“ i want to say. „they were right,“ i don’t say. instead, a slip into a sticky coma. when i wake up, my guilt is drawn out in the sickly shape of the sweat stain on my mattress. it looks a little like the shadows i cast on my hometown’s sidewalks.

there’s a feeling that tingles on my skin like molten sugar. hot molasses carving a wet red path down my torso. the distant memory of what the dragging of a knife feels like on my raw gums. the flashing of a turning light screaming „stop“ behind my eyelids. the sticky hot dryness of a desert eating through my lungs. a stench like burnt skin, like burnt toast in my nostrils. i lift my foot above the shadow it casts. a futile attempt to escape a certain darkness that’s only amplified by the scorching touch of the sun. the air around me flickers. i wonder if i‘d recognise my own hallucinations.

gravel digging trenches in the soft skin of bad knees, gasps like gunshots in the hollow air. intricate southern rituals sound from the valley, while the boy with no tears crashes into the man who yearns. the intoxicating thrill of abandoning reason and placing all bets on the stupid horse. the sobering comedown of the next morning dulled by ancient herbs. ‚you kiss me like you actually mean to‘ and the boy does, but the subjectivity of what a fact can mean to each individual stabs his bruised body with the cold steel of impossible implications. the uneven slope of their contrasting dreams is icy and spiked with false hopes, its foot lined with barbed wire powerful enough to sever a grown man’s jugular. to hear is not to understand and the boy bends his body under the touch of the man’s longing hand until it gives. pieces scatter on the gravel tracks. an aftermath lined with latex signposts of a union that, in the end, was nothing but a gasp in the cold, dead night of the southern countryside.

the girl’s poetry is lined with the spat out needles of a stapler gun, while the boy‘s words reek of jasmine and nut oils. each mirror shows a different reflection. from rose tinted looking-glass visions of subconscious dynamics, to rust-bitten, blind milkiness of ancient vanities. there is an infection spreading from the cut you placed above my navel. skin flares up and blood cells overcompensate. i cut off the loose thread from where the seam has opened. small incisions, pieced together, form the resumé of a lifetime spent in limbo. auto-voyeuristic spectatorship on a mangled soul-cloth dripping with pond water. fish spilled out on the shore and seagulls flew backwards. birds looked like they might carry my sister‘s name. heavy bear the hips that carry your touch.

mouth agape, hair sprawled on a stained mattress. a perfect row of black lashes disturbed by a single white hair. streaks of albinism in a tangled bloodline. bridges bear explosives, ready to turn countryside freedom into nuclear captivity. a heredity grip on all things intoxicating. guilt carried on a hunched back. dry knuckles turned white as a sweaty fist closes tightly around my wrist. there is no god that i believe in, but altars start appearing in my dreams. religion is defined by devotion.

“for Theo” planted on the second page. a new name, stiff like the heavy leather of fresh boots, straight from the factory. haunted by the echoes of its predecessor, hollow in the way it’s not yet filled with the memories of a lifetime. i’m my father’s second daughter and my mother’s first son. a bus honking in the distance provokes the image of a headstone. a name etched into marble, my family trying to match memories with the decision of the deceased. grieving their daughter, again. grieving the son she didn’t get a chance to fully grow into. i wonder who that person might be, buried in the ground. i wonder what that name will come to mean. when i read it on her pages, it lingers in the realm of everything i hope to become.

dried up knuckles, bled raw, as the single physical reminder of the eighteen days that meant everything. the flies buzzing underneath the loathed kitchen fixture a signpost of this financial drought, i imagine myself opening my wallet and a swarm of bees rushing out, eager to bite my malnourished face. i’m rubbed dry on the edges, dandruff decorating the places i’ve haunted. we watched the lily pads rise and the goose eggs hatch, there’s life blooming everywhere, trying to combat the rot we radiate. chlorine works like a charm against the mold growing in the corners and i imagine pipe cleaners scrubbing me from inside. the black gunk dug up leaves another stain on the imperfect hardwood floors. tomorrow i will find you bent over, scrubbing at yet another mark i left. once you drag yourself away from me, where will my ghosts hide in your routines? your traces will linger on my cooked eggs, in the music guiding me through motion blurred cityscapes and in the words i etch into pages, always one step behind the path you laid out in front of me. when there’s no words left, what will remain? for things i cannot say will never exist. i crouch in the shadows you cast and shield my eyes against your brightness. something in me denies the fragility, is convinced of the possibility of an eternity. when does imperfect correlation turn to imminent collision? there’s things to be said, i think while i stare, and blink, and swallow hard.