i fail to understand myself as a whole person and by this logic nothing can happen to me. good or bad, i am imune to it

I am laughing all the way to the front door where I make myself vulnerable; extinguishable. I ask to be taken out - to feel the weight of something feasible; something absolute

I ask to be put away - I am tired now.

i think about the things that i have come from and come through, and i don’t remember ever being so hungry. i think about childhood, girlhood, adulthood. i think about stages and revolutions and rotations of memory and how there is not so much left to discuss. there were canines at the back door and the skins of leather jackets draped; there was a storm that dissolved my infancy and one that left me running. i could want to know where it is that everybody goes, but if i found out i might just go looking. i could open that back door and let the dogs in; lie down with them on the floor of the kitchen and absorb the hum of momentary relief. i could eat my words and i could chain you down. i could grind my jaw less and, yes i could annihilate my own indignation with the back of your hand. it is these words that make it so simple, but they are only suggestions of a feeling i had when i was twelve.

A bee sting in the back of my neck,
like moral oxidation or a change of mind

I am satisfied and then     I am not
I am truthful until I learn to lie

my grandmother watched the crime and investigation network every day
and we would joke that if you needed to get rid of a body

she was the person to ask

what weighs heavy on my chest, on all of my limbs like tacks or stones -
I'm held down, held back, held together with spit and top-soil
bleeding out I filled the bath and could only laugh
no bad left in me,
only things that are sweet and unnecessary

like folds in sheets or stained carpet, I'm there
like an incision I exist to remind you that it does happen, will happen

you're not so alone that you cannot catch fire