holding freezing warmth / devoted air / a loss of broken homes

what we can’t understand in dusty chapels

we see in morning light /

the hum of humble starts / the switch from love to scorn

and i loved the way / the sky would cover / all the shaking

all the mistakes / blamed on strange times /

i miss when it was easy

to blame softer matters / turn away from harsh skin

and be still / i couldn’t forget.

instinctively,

i never wave or say hello first.

when i was younger,

i never invited friends over or

asked for playdates,

afraid that everyone would decline

and say no, sorry, i’m busy that day

and the worst is the artificial taste of each apology.

so i think i wait to be greeted for the same reason,

to prevent the embarrassment of not being recognized

of the hey! we know each other from…?

or even worse, a complete avoidance. pure silence.

it’s my day off from work.

i walk along the water, breathe in the scent of salt

and garbage and leftover beer from last night,

weed from the trucks passing by.

i’m wearing a yellow sundress, carrying a book

and every once in a while a man shouts out his window

beeps his horn

leers at me until i run out of places to look away.

i think it’s weird that boys my age don’t notice me

but i’m a hit among the forty and over club.

everything is heady and bright and hot and you’re in your room with the cat trying to consume mary shelley’s frankenstein and thinking about sex on your mother’s grave and you think about the form slumbering at your feet and how it’s strange that there is another living breathing thing with you in the room that has millions of complex processes going on and it’s almost too much to think about your own body not the outside but the inside- and then you think how strange it is that we walk and talk with each other while our hearts beat unsure unsure of themselves and we all have veins and they’re all working at the same time while we walk and talk and think with each other and maybe it’s just the heatwave but a little patience and all will be over but you have to think quickly quickly on your deathbed unless you’re like me and have had your last words picked out for ages and the books on hold at the library will be ready soon and you’re spending every moment thinking about them and you realize it’s not a hunger not like the one richard wright described it’s a lust for books not knowledge but books the pages paper letters ink all of it because wow those oxford commas taste amazing on your tongue so you never stop and the electric current makes you shiver and everything is hyperfocused the heat beneath your skirt the hairs on your skin the way your foot is curled unceremoniously underneath the way your heel digs into your thigh the way the sun hits the window the way your breath comes shallowly so you finally spread out and rest your head down and try to sleep and forget everything but your mind won’t be ignored for long so you turn over and draw your knees together and stretch without stretching and it satiates you, if only for a little while.

after phoebe tells me she wants to die, we roll our eyes // there is nothing deader than an indie darling so she was already leagues deep // I slur words and ask her if she likes ohio // enough to live for it // she says no but does anyone and don’t we all exist anyway // the zombies chase after us as we escape our hideaway for one last night // she strikes charli and jack with her spiked bat as we run and it is sick and beautiful like us // our bodies bitten // turning undead // she pushes me towards the tour van and I know where we’re meant to go // our mountain dew-rotted veins drive us home // past the sun like she always wanted // and when we pull over on interstate 71 and look up it is barely there // our sights bleeding away // HELL IS REAL // IF YOU DIED TODAY WHERE WOULD YOU SPEND ETERNITY // and I feel a hunger taking over // a throatfire inside me // right here, phoebe // I say // come nearer, baby

i used to look down when i saw you,

afraid that any push would endear me to your hooks

for a lifetime, that if i saw you up close

it would flood my senses,

push water under an inevitably apathetic bridge.

we never spoke in full sentences;

i never learned you middle name and you

certainly didn’t know my biggest fears. but i

am certain that our eyes didn’t lie,

that our comfortable silence wasn’t foolishness

but caution. like the wind, we came and went,

strengths and feelings lingering behind.

now, when i walk i look for signs:

diamond shaped paths or a the self conscious way

you shook your legs when you were nervous or sad.

the other day i thought i heard you from above,

the changes in your breath mimicked by the leaves

on a strangely solemn summer afternoon.

i wasn’t mad when you left,

wasn’t pleased with where we paused, but i have faith

in big people. i have pride in honest promises.

in january i grew rotten with love

until my mother could no longer hold me,

scrappy and mewling, in her mouth.

their teeth, their dinners, their sweet red wine, i spoiled it,

i fermented in the cellar, in my gown of aubergine

in my hunger. i peeled the world open with my bare hands

desperate and sick like a dog searching for a dead body.

i found nothing but my own collarbones

and i fashioned them into swords. my body was no longer

useful as a body so i made it into a weapon.

and when i turned there was nobody to hurt

save for myself. soft flesh upon soft flesh,

begging to be opened up and turned inside out,

turned into a window, so that it might watch the sun.

in february i threw open the curtains

so that the moonlight might kiss me

with her butterfly mouth. instead the fruit flies

swallowed me whole like a rotting plum

out of season. their hungry mouths on my heart

something almost tender: like a knife drawn across

the bare back in sleep, the skin left trembling.

the not-kiss. what was left to do but surrender,

to the hum, the windows and their sea-breeze,

the nightgown and its white flag.

in march i was a dead thing, not yet found

or wept over or preserved and not divine enough

to rot gracefully. the sunbeams and maggots

sang songs of mourning into my hair. in march

i was all the words for empty.

a library spilled open on the floor like a mouth

hungry for matches - like alexandria in her nightdress

begging to be burned down. the earth did not want me.

the bonfire with its whiskey-ridden teeth beckoned.

the first death was not beautiful enough

so i had to try again. we kill dead things all the time.

burn them and return them neatly. just one go is ordinary,

shameful. i wanted to make things right. i set my world on fire.

in april i rose into the air like cigarette smoke

and swallowed up the rebellion sky.

all the leather jacket girls with their bloodred lipstick

watched me disappear into the night outside the party.

i may have wanted them. i may have wanted to be them.

i didn't know the whole story but it was so full of hunger.

my Great Big Cloud of want blotting out the moon.

and i was so fragile. the stars put their hands through me.

they carved a man out of my image -

wide-hipped and devilish -

and sent him up to heaven.

this was the end of the prayers

they would say in my honor.

in may i looked alive

if you held me in the right light.

like a drunkard turning under a streetlamp

who for one moment becomes a showman.

my ragged clothes, my moon-faced wonder,

half divine and half human and all sky.

i wanted to tell you all. i wanted to let you in

on my secret. if there were rooftops to walk on

i would have taken up smoking, had conversations

with the stars. i would have shouted from the top.

would have said this is so fucked up.

i’m something and then i’m not.

and by the way, what are we all doing here?

in our tender-hearted kitchens, our yellowing bedrooms,

bodies passed from person to person like heirlooms.

give me a break. give me something to work with.

in june i will tilt my head towards the heavens

and ask to be baptized by the sunshine.

at night, the moon will write love letters to my flesh, like

a high school lover sneaking in through the open window.

in june i will be alive alive alive - i will be a shrine

to the light buried within me - i will learn

to worship the things that i did not think existed.

when i grin, the ocean will roar between my teeth.

i will pray that for once, it will not

leave behind the taste of blood.

a glimmer of the kids we used to be

written in the cracks of guilty sidewalks-

i ran with you

because i thought you’d wait up at the end.

we took a day trip to another dimension;

the sun was a pond,

their God was a moment

of fleeting hysteria

on the cusp of relief.

flushed memories singe my skin

and i feel no bitterness in the sting.

we were young, you know.

we didn’t make use of our time.

i’m a golden hour girl, a lover of sour gummies that get stuck in my teeth, a mint eater, a sun bather, a walks-over-runs kind of soul.

i’m a loud cryer, a self-righteous fighter, an agonized writer, an insecure flighty-fidgety-burnt-out-people-pleaser kind of person.

i like sunsets, hot sand, hands-out-of-the-sun-roof radio chants, bedroom slow dances, barefoot dreaming kind of days.

i like being alone with the wind, talking to my very few friends, pretending to be careless and then going home to fix it all up for the next kind of days.

give me a warm greetings, artificial icy sweetness, learning-how-to-drive-with-my-dad mornings, butterflies in my stomach, inchworms on my wrists kind of summer.

leave me harsh goodbyes, poetry that doesn’t rhyme, painted sure-we’ll-hang-out-this-week lies, misuses of the word “vibe,” flimsy mistreatment of valuable lives this summer.

i look up to the yellow ceiling and pray

to who i don't know- to the woman-god, god-woman

the one who ate the earth so it sits in her stomach,

unbothered.

the timer is still counting down, and it cannot be stopped

so i hook my heels on the sides of my chair and continue

praying.

sometimes i want to eat the world too but i'm not big enough

or at least

that's what they told me.

maybe after the timer runs out it will be different.

maybe my forest will grow thick enough that nothing can penetrate

maybe i'll learn to navigate that rubyfruit jungle

that lost womyn space.

cause when i studied for this test i learned about

the cult of domesticity

republican motherhood

the feminine mystique.

i thought maybe those women in the textbook

maybe they don't want to be pillars.

white pillars modest and clean and straightbacked.

sure we carry the earth in our stomachs but do we have to shoulder the sky?

i wondered this while the timer was counting down

until i had to take the test

until i turned seventeen.

i waited all day for the world to end

but the earth inside me rumbled on.