Twigs In My Hair

Slowly, I stopped needing people. It was a steep climb for a codependent as he said in his email, yet another stranger, met in person makes it worse. Another human with conditions. My contrition makes me “the listener” so they love me more that way: three dimensional and silent; not this clacking of the keys, the wise retorts, the endless stories.

The real pills you take are fake as plastic shrubs. Neither here nor in my bed do I dread anything more than confrontation.

Smoking is the greatest addiction. It covers up the blunders as you hesitate to inhale, then exhale. Like life, only more so, for you are prepared to let it go. Anything for a good conversation, if only with one’s self.

Edge of Once

I pack peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in my satchel. I am but a peasant. My dowry is an army knife and the skill to slice whatever needs to.

Swaddled babies line the fence, their mothers’ breasts, exposed; the sacrificial tongues of babes, trusting ones, dine on liquid from the flesh.

Trees do not speak. Neither do the fields where I search for food.

I’ve always lived alone; baby in me dead before arrival.

The nearest bathroom, filled with scent of incense. I bled and bled. The smell of frankincense, pain so intense, my breath…passed out on the toilet; later, I pray: not again. Not this, too.

The nuisance of others drains me, stains me with abuse.

There is a sterile room I once lived in. The doctors wore masks and the nurses kept track of my pulse. They counted down from ten and after seven I was gone.

miasma fugue

more people like me than you do me.
you don’t.

when i went under the covers you imagined another.
you thinking you were deserving of

other than
i,

too, have petroglyphs against my sin
my blades are shoulders arms reach far

men have touched me deep in the knife wound
which is you

a serial killer of dented lines a hook which took the eye
when i cried scarlet in the heart so innocently was i

sicker than
any pack animal can tell you

how much the pursued is pursuant upon
a clause in the material fabric of a lie

no shadow in a word
no blood