it's not a prison that
keeps me segregated from the
general population to
protect their neurotypical minds
that are terrified by
a blood lust directed toward the self
or perhaps that urge to consume
and consume
all just foreplay for the
grand finale where i'm
bent over the toilet and riding
that stratospheric high
catapulting me out of this world
and into the forest of stars
a pinprick in the infinite black of
space

but do not misunderstand
it is not some sort of jailbreak
a streaking figure in the
black and white stripes of shame
clinging to my exiled body
it is more the futile pulling
i am not stuck in the trap

i am the trap

and i lock down on my
vices and the
self destruction that sings
the most sickly sweet songs
that somehow convince me
that if i am pulled even tighter
i might somehow break the mould
and no longer lash myself to
those actions and thoughts
that terrify
and destroy

i worry i am the strip
of glue that hangs in the kitchen
to catch the fruit flies that
come to visit in the summer and
pester me until
they land their feet on my
sticky
sickly
trap
they can't escape
and so they die

is that what i do to them?
is that what i do to you?

do you become paralyzed
by some sort of
noxious agent or
a viscous bog that
cements you here
and forces you to watch
eyelids held open
as i dance with the demons that
you assure yourself
you will be able to tame
you will be able to banish

but they're the one's who've been there
decades of companionship
and torture
Stockholm syndrome that
ties me to them
through some sort of
vital connection which i can't escape
clipping the umbilical cord
and leaving me bleeding on the ground
aching for that part of me
that is gone

so i pull myself
i stretch myself so thin
and the harder that
your fingers fight to escape my trap
the harder i clamp down
because i want you to go away
to prevent the inevitable pain
and yet i pull you tighter
i lock your fingers into me
my nails digging into your back
as if somehow i can affix myself
to you.

i heard my mom use the L word
when i was telling her
about my personally forbidden escapades
with the boy
my doctor
who i’ve let see
a framed picture of
an iota of my wounds
but still cannot bring myself to call
my boyfriend
as if the word is somehow poisoned
as i’ve convinced myself
in my loneliness
that the idea of that
feeling that most definitely isn’t love
was the stinging venom
burning through my veins
melting my skin to
waxy torrents coursing
from gaping wounds
butchered into my supple dermis
trying to escape my corporeal prison.

my body seizes at the utterance
of two syllables
because i am terrified that
the house of cards that
hold up that word on such an
unnatural pedestal
will crumble
evaporate into the
ether hanging around me
keeping me drunk on
that piquing ache churning
reaching deeper than
the bedrock of my stomach
that my incessant pepto can’t touch
a blowfly burrowing itself
into the mucosa of my abdominal cavity
that i know is filled with my
vital organs
but feels more like a vacuum.

he’s not my boyfriend
even though i tell him to turn over
in the darkness of our
shared slumber
so i can be the big spoon
and he can teach me how to breath
his respirations in his back
pressing my chest into
inhalation
just as my head on his chest
rises and falls
with him
my pectoral moon
pulling my tides
surrendering to the
inevitable turn and living
in that imperceptible moment
between inhalation and exhalation
a silence wherein
we are one
and i feel like his skin
could perhaps be mine.

it seems too contrite
to think that it is a revelation
that life can change in a single instant
like the fraction of a second
the blink of an eye
when the world goes dark and
you forget that you can
actually see

but i get stuck there
knocked out of this reality
and thrown headlong
onto the asphalt that
doesn't give way for
my crystalline bones and
tear-stained face
how can this not be real
when the pain is inescapable
taking up residence
in each secret crevice of
my war-torn self
and i can't run
with these compound fractures
ivory bone peeking through
my crimson stained skin
my spilt blood somehow
reabsorbing into my pores
trying to return home
but those cells are outlaws
they've been expelled
exiled and it feels like
they are now more a part of
the obsidian ground around me
where i've lost myself

where no one can reach me

i'm behind a mirror
hidden in a plume of smoke
and my agony
my suffering cannot be touched
or sublimated into ether
where i can die
and all the world will note
is the lack of my return
to the reality of
the world around them
so concrete they would
never imagine the
tenuous connection that we share
a fishing line that
i rely on
that i wrap around my fist
until it cuts to the bone
and i am certain that
it cannot be pulled away

but i lose it
i grasp desperately
to pull it back into the
wounds where it
fits like that's where it was
created to inhabit
and when i'm empty
when i'm not bleeding
from self-inflicted
gunshot wounds
and razor slices that
never seem to fall
deep enough
to remind me that i'm
still alive
to spread bloodstains
and confirm the
strange world around me
is actually reality
and that i am a part of it

because most of the time
i feel like an interloper
an alien species
and integration
is impossible.

you know who i am
you have seen her
dancing in flickering candlelight
heady breath wafting the
sickly sweet smell of
too many consumed beers
drowning my inhibitions
inundating my irises and
letting my eyes betray my
carefully constructed façade
the grenade you throw yourself upon

but you haven't asked the right question

have you never wondered
what i am?

i am the tolling of
bells echoing through
deserted streets
cobbles screaming for
footfalls and bustling crowds
the only witnesses to the
belfry's solemn song
reverberating off the
business fronts boarded up
to ward off the reality of sobriety
and Death's march through the streets
sending the inhabitants running
disturbed dust blinding their
frenzied eyes
who search for a sacrificial lamb
as if a swathe of blood
across the door could
keep away such an
inevitability

i am the stars
but don't confuse that with
a confession
or profession of some sort
that i'm something infinite
for you to probe
with hyper-drives and
deep suspended animation
there is no alien microbial life
lurking below my frozen
absolute zero surface
i'm only the stars that
you lose track of as
you leave the blackness of
open space and enter
a deafening city where
skyscrapers obscure
and the pollution of
a million lovers' ecstasy
drowns out the light
wrought in the deepest parts of me
and catapulted through
the lightyears of black vacuum
only to be lost
choked out by incessant
revelry

i am the heaviness that
yolks itself around your shoulders
and the night black that
wraps itself around you in
its vicious velvet embrace to
***** out your breath and
envelop you
swallow you
pinch the flame
asphyxiate your existence

i am the tunnel under
the Pont de l'Alma
a loss of control and the
echoing reverb of
skidding rubber
tires whose
black smoke chokes out
the screams which constitute
the end and last breath of
a goddess among men who
never could understand her
and in her end
found culpability

i am the petrichor haze
that settles
nestles itself into every
corner of the barren graveyard
wherein lies my comfort
and my greatest hope
my fear of names and dates
and chiseled stone
and finality that means
a peaceful nothingness
that welcomes the most
effervescent
ebullient
peace
that comes with the
cessation of neural firings
and the end of all things.

i was born in a ghost hospital
a pile of stones and then a blank slate
with new antiseptic rooms
invisible blood-stained linoleum
and the sound of rubber tennis shoe soles
replacing the place where
i was born with dying stars in my eyes
and supernovae bursting with the
last of their fiery energy before they
blink out of existence
like the hospital where i was born

am i now to be a woman
without true north
a single brick from the single place
where i respired freely and
crisp breaths of truth passed
like whispers over my wordless lips
before the oozing obsidian night
slowly crept up and
wrapped itself around me like
a flea infested blanket
and the blinding white light
of a growing chain reaction
a deafening ring in my ears
nothing

then slow realization that
i'm still alive
battered by beta particles
attacked by alphas
and i'm alone in the nuclear winter
to trek towards my kaaba
the only piece of
where i came into the world
and was the baby girl that
my parents cradled in their
awkward hesitant arms
the little angel my father thought
would certainly break
into a million pieces by the slightest breath of wind
and scatter to heaven
for where else should such innocence be?

i yearn for that brick
from my hospital
because its foundation was built
on something apart
from eating disorders
bipolar disorder
suicide attempts
neat lines of cuts in various stages of healing
when i hold that stone in my hand
residual sand from the
demolition site crumbling
as i turn the cement over
and over
its warmth and weight so real in my hand
that i can see a dim light in a window
a glowing blonde kissing
her black haired beau
and the baby in her arms
theirs
even just for that night.

could my restlessness
just be little earthquakes
calling for tremulous gestures
like a flick of a string
attached to
the puppet's lifeless wrist
wherein lies the
constantly turning nebulae
satisfied only by the
empty obsidian space
a spattering of crystal
on midnight whisperings

my bed clings to me
a parting lover
or perhaps a parasitic twin
bound to me by flesh
our surgical silk bond
rope veins lashing us together
tied in perfect boy scout
honor badge knots
sharing my blood that is
now our own

why does the throbbing nothing
seated right between my temples
cry out in agony for
the stillness of a deep sleep
and yet rages against
my fluttering eyelids
hummingbirds on honeysuckle
scattering to dust
at the coming nuclear winter
that ever consuming fission reactor
at precise center
pointing true north
the exact point within me
where each other position is
equal distance

i write to you
somewhere out there
a beautiful part of that world
a string in the tapestry
that no theory could ever define
i write to you so you can know
that i straddle the brick wall
barricading this world
from the ever-present storm of chaos

half of me is woven to you
but half of me is still being pulled
by the unfathomable gravity
of a black hole

where am i?
how am I to write when
I am no different from
those gaseous ephemeral words
who lie prostrate upon
the pages of my dictionary
carved plainly into
those battlefields strewn across
the wartorn country
my heart the despotic dictator
whose primal drumming
carries no tune
and no rhythm
and throws of explosions
grenades that
black out the world for
a brief moment
until it careens back and
slams into me
disorientated

i should have been born twice
for how could i have
both my body and that
intangible inexplicable
something inside
it stirs at the molten core
of me
that chasm that forged
those graven images
that first gave way to
a pictographic language
and offered me
a voice
to explain that immutable
all powerful
urge
lust
to throw myself on that
red button and
detonate
burst into a million pieces
and finally relieve that
nauseating pressure
of adipose smushed between
holy bone and
saintly skin
interloping in that space
and separating two lovers

barriers create madness

walls box me in
and yet i grow
an expanding balloon girl
macy’s day parade and
candy littered streets
and razor sharp edges
to steel walls pressing harder
against me than
my supple skin could
ever possibly press
back

i can’t breathe

there is no room
for my lungs to expand
and feel the
fresh sun filled meadow
of crystal air
delivering oxygen to
starved alveoli
and i can’t find your chest
to guide me
in impossible respiration

i’m suffocating in my own skin
from no outside force
but my body itself
turns inward and
shouts its dominance at my
cowering self
sniveling in the corner
of my dusty half used heart
where no blade could possible
land a blow deep enough
to silence the torment and
particular personal poison
a torture to course through
every part of me
activating every single neuron
and making me
hyperaware of my
shame and noxious
venomous corpulence
a reality i
never wanted you to see
but is written plainly
in fiery script across my forehead
and in every fold of fat.