survival of the minimally fit

Carve sand like bone

Show me despair, yours, as you have

felt mine

Cross the threshold stone

Your face in my hands

Salt and tears on your skin

In this burning house there are no sins

Dear earth-bound man

I promise you this -

A seat at the table, at the hearth solace

Moonlight eyes burn

Midnight waves crash and churn

Call me what you will - a piece of shit or the Only One Who Can Do It - whatever drags me by the guilt in my guts towards you again.

The remaining gears of the machine turn relentlessly, endlessly mangled and running on empty because you never stop coming back.

drifts a rose-colored haze

arrive at the place -

sweet grasses where we lay

dusk field of nothing save

for endless stars faraway,

earthen ground, and two out-cast aways

frogs croak and leaves sway

trace wind's current underway

full silence on display

everyday

piece of Heaven in mind's foray

rose-colored place

painted beauty

glass eyes vacant socket

doll heart concavity

plucked from the dusty attic depths

alight with a pull of her strings

for curious eyes she dances, makes merry

pretty plaything lost her luster

cut the burdensome strings and

If I can't kill you with kindness

I can't kill you with the gun neither

Do it yourself

I wish I could forget

black water in my lungs dreadful guts stuffed with guilt

my name is cruel daughter, tough love, cold bitch

The shoes threadbare perfect fit

push me pull me poke me prod me

I'm a monster! condemn me

I accept your revulsion

Terrible traction magnet sticks

Give me a fucking break and

A smoke

A rest taken

To gaze upon nothing

Dust motes glittering in evening light

This place of berry-rich skies

Inhale

Turn off the radio

Exhale

Burnt smoke

In the silence

but we carry them like mirrors

there are words for what is seen

the angel draped in dusk

wrapped in beautiful phrasing

wordplay finery

a vision

in written word

reality mimics dreams

my body aches with absence

muscle memories -- longing, longing

the passage of time

where our eyes never stopped speaking

my heart never stopped pounding

where we have burned quietly and left no trace

smoke washes out in the rain, after all

unbury the corpse

i am the dirt underneath your fingernails

your aching pain

present in life

ignored in death next

your blue blood

not good, only real

with you

at the top of the hill

a grass field by the sea

just high enough to watch the tides crash and sink against the earth

You stood

in ankle-deep sand

and I watched the wind try to take you

greedily clinging to your frame

and I understood her

and she swayed you

Up the hill

I could see for myself

Exchange loss for growth

Anger for peace

wild turbulence in your eyes

light and shadow cast across dark lashes

a crooked smile all sweetness

magnetic infuriation

reveal to me

all left unsaid

enough to close the door with these words

enough to disappear from your sight

If you could see me

you'd realize just as I have

rotten core wrapped in pink skin

lashed by the wretched woman

who looks like me

and is

sunk into dull flesh

gouge out the peel

consume the fruit

dispose of the shell

lifeless fragments cling beneath crescent fingernails

inside a plastic tunnel on the playground, scuffed-up knees drawn to her chest

hiding.

Shoulders hunched from the weight piling up, up, up

of mother's reddened face, father's blank one, of poison-sweet breath against her cheek, of screams that vibrate walls, of the stars that won't grant her wishes.

20 years ago, I knew love and fear.

10 years ago, I was sick with rage.

Now, I feel the years fold against me like skin over bone. The girls of my past settle into the rings of my ribs.