I updated my Twitter name recently:

Alex is Writing Again.

I wanted it to say:

Alex is sad again

Alex doesn't recognize their own face

in photos anymore

Alex doesn't know if they ever knew

just what it is they look like.

I wanted it to say:

Alex feels like a salted slug

sometimes

Alex just wants to feel okay

again.

The only thing Alex knows anymore

is their own fucking name,

one they chose,

took for themself,

after hacking words

to pieces.

It's the only thing of Alex's

that feels like Alex

anymore.

Alex is Writing Again.

Or rather, they're trying to,

when they can unspool the words,

tangled like matted hair,

each sentence combed out,

fingers cramped around the brush.

The more creative they are,

the more the salt rains down,

but it's better than hours spent

staring into mirrors,

desperate for recognition.

Fair Narcissa,

all your beauty could not be contained

in the shallow pools you peered into.

You saw your darkness beneath the surface,

called it a new name in your folly.

You washed yourself clean with filth,

dubbed yourself baptized and saved,

without ever living the grace you preached.

Hypocrite Narcissa,

the fruits of this world could never be enough

for you.

You plucked from giving trees on endless loop,

blaming nature once you'd taken too much

instead of your greedy hands.

Cowardly Narcissa,

praying endlessly for ascension,

begging to escape a world you could not control.

You sought peace in the chaos you caused,

blamed it when you couldn't sleep,

blind to your own misdeeds.

Foolish Narcissa,

using faith as a torch.

Olympic ambrosia was never yours to taste,

yet you're still aimlessly searching.

No light graces the steps you take,

but you're too shrouded in darkness to see it.

We are mortal engines

under a black-hole sun,

compromised and empty.

We are love in a season

of bone harvesting,

clockwork angels in a fatal communion,

grave memories abroad.

We are possessed, extorted, enraged,

under a rising flame.

this morning i had a dream we danced in the shower.

we hummed a song i don't remember the name of.

as the water crashed down on us,

we laughed like it was the first time we made love.

the air was thick with our shared shampoo,

of our cherry almond body soap.

we held hands and danced so close together,

there was no room for even water between us.

when i woke up, i had the smell of our shampoo on my pillow.

it was so pleasant i almost cried.

Mother,

You always wanted a houseplant for a daughter,

something you could force into soil and water when convenient.

Maybe I could fit into the pot by the printer,

your busy fingers scrubbing my roots clean before you dropped me in

and forgot about me.

You've always bragged about having a green thumb, after all.

But you forgot to check my tags,

mother,

and even your (un)nurturing hands could not prevent my decay.

Or perhaps I look better hung from your ceiling, mother,

limp roots trailing a map to all the places you've fucked me

over.

I'm sure my own vines make a lovely rope necklace,

vibrant green against deathly grey,

twisting roundandroundandround my neck

and squeezing.

We never had a chance, mother.

But you grew us anyway,

and one by one we tumbled out,

worm-infested apples to your wise tree.

You dusted us off and called us beautiful,

took us back into the very reaches of yourself.

As you plucked grubs from your smile,

you told us to thank you

for bringing us into our own dead world.

We wouldn't grow in your stomach, mother.

We wouldn't grow at all.

You planted fireweeds and hoped for roses,

then burned your crops at the first

sign of weakness.

Mother,

through fire and flooded field,

the only danger to our germination

was you.

Rain

drops on

my windowsill. God

cries from His perch

above the world.

I

am crying,

too. The tears

continue

on.

My bed still smells like sex.

Correction:

My bed still smells like the two of us intertwined,

like two galaxies coalescing,

two hearts beating,

two moons setting at once.

My bed still smells like sex.

It smells like salt water and star dust,

tastes like vanilla incense and unbreakable passion,

rocking hips and wild abandon,

fists through hair and a desperate plea:

Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop,

Filling holes we thought we'd left empty

long ago.

My bed still smells like gasping moans

and gripped bedsheets

and tangledtangledtangled legs

wrapped anchor-tight around waists.

It tastes like exploration,

like a psychedelic compilation of hopes

and dreams

and needs so tidal-strong.

Come home, he said,

and so I did.

My bed still smells like us.

[Cityscape, 4:00 PM]

Ground rumbles under feet,

systematic,

mechanical.

Buildings taller than America's Dreams rake the sky.

They tower,

they dominate.

City is a roaring beast,

tense,

volatile.

Nature sits in earthen realm.

She is screaming.

She is --

City is awake now,

livid and brazen.

It raises its metallic claws

and pounces.

I remember good-old days gone by when life was stable

and life was short,

and all I had to fear was doing lines off girls I used to know,

shooting their fears and insecurities into my veins,

each personality a new drug I'd never tried,

each smokey inhale a new moan I'd yet to capture.

I remember when I said I'd found the blades on a sidewalk someday,

as if making off like that was any better than stealing from a classroom,

as if passing my habits up as habitual was any better than the truth.

I was addicted.

Not to getting high and not to collecting names;

I was addicted to destruction,

addicted to every time a new "me" dissolved

in place of an old;

there WAS no "me" by the time the weed kicked in.

I was addicted to forgetting,

to scrubbing off names and personalities from my skin like bad bath salts.

I'd dabbed and blazed with the best of them,

turning my insides to ashy tombs,

turning my lungs to the entranceway to a psychological cemetery I could never escape from.

I burned.

I sank.

I drowned.

Miles of heroin oceans kept me under like waves on a riverbank,

reminding me of days I should have drowned -

I should've jumped -

I should've died,

if only to spare you the pain of handling relapses spent sobbing under bedroom pillows.

Our pillow-talk consisted of you begging me not to do it,

and stupid me couldn't tell the difference between "no" and "yes"

and I sank and I sank and I -

Lived.

But it wasn't quite living.

My brain was a shell no snail wanted solace in;

Even shellfish knew better than to scavenge in my ocular caves.

There was nothing left for them,

just snowy remains of a past I once had but now misplaced.

All the pearls were glass shards in disguise and I shattered

under their weight.

I scrambled for driftwood in a stoney haze,

all the while forgetting what it felt like to say my own name.

Also available on my writing tumblr