under my therapist’s guidance,
I sit down and talk to my inner predator,
learn where all the trouble started.

now, now, listen to the guilt, it’s talking.

 I’ve always been drawn to sentences:

spent sunrise picking at covered clots;
veins growing lush with unsheltered heart,
profuse & spilling drops that
take years of self harm but
eventually
amount to
(fingers crossed)
one very
disconsolate
flood.

the salve is in the drowning.

I stomp into the other room and
shatter the bowl
she let me borrow.
strip my skin of clothes and scent in
a hot steam bath
and
let the pieces rest.

watch my step 
around the house
for now.

my place,
one carnelian cobweb,
can’t be swept.

“heart”

shattered
at the not now
you spoke back
(like I’m just some summer blossom)

hem slipping up to expose my own,
a garter wrapped around my left thigh:
bruises,
fresh with conquest,
lasting impact of
your parting mouth that just
hangs there and hurts when I
shower.
wait

I’m counting
cicada shells
under the picnic table.
a gesture of presence.
Someone told me to stop replaying old voicemails and
I needed a year to pass.
I scrubbed away the last of your fingernail but I have to
ride the bite marks out.

I stick out my tongue to catch all she had.
cageless.
bold with my repentance
and ready to wash the phantomsaway.

the gray sky remembered
(wait)
she had lightning.
suddenly elucidated,
remembering:
I am the dark thing inside of me.

“prayer”

“did you think I wore this city without pain?”

-Adrienne Rich

       I know how the caged tongue stings

I am fearless 
only in writing.
Only in meter and rhyme.
Otherwise,
I am quaking.
I’ve got a bone to pick-
a few of yours
to dissever.
wolves don’t just bluster
they watch for long periods
of time,
until.

“Prayer”

Rainstorm.

In my backyard,

planted in mud.

Life my face to the thunder.

Open my arms

like petals

of a thirsty rose.

Stick out my tongue to catch all she had.

And the gray sky remembered

she had lightning.

you’re a gray timber distance:

overcast.

dull and falling.

learning how to be gentle with does,

chrysanthemums, the faux antiques I left,

all the obloquious parts of yourself.

I’m a light shiver

wrapped in an afghan somewhere else,

sun with someone else. 

laugh resounding in buzzing

pages

for days, a string of 

soft adjectives capturing the stun of

unrequited silence, devouring you 

in mild cadence.

be gentle with yourself

and take cover in your recovering vituperation,

your newfound green,

forest of self-commendation

for trying to change.

hold a rose bud my way.

be gentle.

let the glare from my smile

blind you

in stages.

let the blossom it makes

shade you.

tonight I’ll do:

A spring equinox meditation,

brush my teeth

cut grapefruit for the morning,

ride the waiting out.

Pay homage to my Pluto;

my twelfth house of self undoing.

Unapologetically expand.

Im becoming a panacea of my own