taciturn but for some
icy speech and bleak;
caustic prose in
squalling breezes that freeze
and stick to your cheeks,
harden               bite your tongue
in frostbit chomps so it takes a while before we
cut those
meek coughs off
just as they start.
before they form into spit,
white noise, handwritten
cards,

I sprout into a raging sun.

when I took the first half tab, it was a beautiful winter day and I was so lucid, I was able to walk into the Apple store to buy new headphones. I was able to walk into Target to grab some juice. I was able to give my juice to a woman on the ground outside. I was able to smile, buoyantly carried across town, text a friend and laugh gaily. the second half tab was blustery. new year’s day. a week later but a storm in between and there was too much ice out. i was stuck indoors.

sometimes I pretend a man is asking me something and it forces it to be truthful, blunt, terse. I don’t lie when I am in my imagination in this way, but I do lie. or rather, I twist things to see them from all different sides and I can land on truths that are more beside me than in me. the term is distortion.

it was noon when it hit me. I was afraid to go outside. afraid I would slip on the bridge and fall into the frozen river below. some recurring vision. now, I looked around at my cartoon apartment; pasted, covered in bright postcards I had made to guide me through the year prior. like a map. suddenly a choir of men:

what do you all day, Ava?

they say the first hour is the hardest but I know it’s the third when it’s fully digested. they say it’s one man but I say it’s three. they say  I wanted options and to name them. they say what do you want, AVA? they say I’m gonna kill myself and
I say

I think about killing myself all day.

draw the third heart on my hand and exhale. focus on not crossing the bridge all day.

“the third hour”

sometimes I pretend a man is asking me something and it forces it to be truthful, blunt, terse. I don’t lie when I am in my imagination in this way, but I do lie. or rather, I twist things to see them from all different sides and I can land on truths that are more beside me than in me.

distorting things into options that are more malleable.  what motivates me? water. i’m always in the water and I always was. swimming. dancing.  I used to love doing twirls and flips in the water. I was a very graceful gymnast at the pool and in the ocean. even from a young age, I could keep up with my brother and Amanda, my friend, two years my senior. I was fast and reckless. I loved touching the bottom of wherever we were: lake, ocean, bay, deep end. I always had to prove I could my hold my breath. my tactic was tried several times like a video game. if you have a ledge grab hold and push. if not, find strength right there in diaphragm. then swan dive, feet first, quickly to the bottom, touch it with force, hard, hit it, really feel it and launch yourself back upwards to the top before any of the other kids.  I especially loved challenging boys.I was very fast. I pointed my toes and I only needed the impact of the top of my feet. I was used to that stance. my dad always pointed it out. that I was always on my tiptoes and prancing, sort of twirling and also flapping my hands a bit. 

I was messy too. like my dad. that’s where I get it from. spilling everything. 

“I am my father’s daughter.” 

I am in a bathtub in the middle of a pandemic but I am also being pulled slowly into the sea sometime in the nineties. there are three hearts on my hand and I am here in a cartoon apartment pasted with postcards like compasses
and I think about
killing myself
all day.

“the third hour”

I began to run the tub:  a familiar grieving place. I loved the containment. the colors.  threw a yellow cap in.  looks like urine. I threw a red tab to make it dark pink.  I can’t take anything less than wide open, spacious. all walls were  constricting. I also feel the need to be swaddled like a baby. I like pacifiers. something in my mouth, something to hold me. something to press upon me. I walked back to my room unsure of myself. I was trapped in a bad place and a bad place. Philadelphia, America. grabbed jasmine oil. walked to tub, sprinkled. walked back. put it away. I didn’t think about anything while I did it even how steep the stairs are. the ritual was nice. the movement. there is no time.I got into the tub as it started to fill. a habit of mine. I couldn’t wait for it to finish and I wanted to listen to the water run. I noticed my feet first: lanky, bony then my legs, different, bigger. my hands though: young, like when I was a child. all my acrylic nails off except the two thumbs. one of them wavering under water, loose, ready to be pulled off. I watched my hands turn in the water like that slowly as it filled. noticing my calves against them. it looked like there were bumps up and down my shin bone. my legs have changed. my hands have grown. one day, they will be wrinkled. the water on top of my hands felt nice and was pleasing to look at. even though my nails they were beaten brittle short like when I was in elementary school,  I could feel my young hands grow out of that place. I could feel my old voice say you have to take the pressure off and then I just moved  downward till my forehead touched the water. I remembered swimming. spending days at the pool, hours in the water in the ocean or the bay. waves didn’t scare me.  I liked riding them in the surf. the deep end didnt scare me. I was an excellent swimmer.  then what happened?  the male voice says. and me answering without pause, and then one day i developed an intense phobia of water. I could see my toes, curled on the porcelain, the way they were when they were feeling for mole crabs. I could see my head falling under and an intense
and
inescapable
fear of drowning.

“I carry a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other hand.”

—Rabi’a

nice smile.

small.
unmonitored fidgeting.
nervous laughter.
seems to force her way through small
talk and presents as
calm but quite patently
fanatical
about some previous existential
crisis that she says
left her marked.
POXED, she
calls it.

she doesn’t show me her skin and
is currently being touched and
does not like to be touched without
motive.
|she is currently being undressed.
she is currently turning from ice
to flood to
|to steady stream of
cold, red blood
and asked me to sing this
last part out loud.

“how guys save me in their phone #1”

I trap ants
in containers
of sugar to
see how long
it takes them to suffocate.

“the rooms”

my friends and i spent a lot of time in the ditch behind my best friend’s house. it was just a little spot of woods. a little creek. some beer cans along the way. a few Slurpee cups (ours) and we liked the reprieve of shade in August and we liked the shelter of no one else around. we would dare each other to do things. howl as loud as you can. do a cartwheel near the thornbed. press your whole hand in the mud.  jump over a pile. make it to the other side. actually they dared me to do these things. I just needed the green light and having gotten skin in rose stem, a little blood didn’t bother me. would often become engrossed in the cut before bandaging it. I took a lot of risks is the understatement of a lacerated life.

there was a time I tried to jump over one of the widest sections of the water. after seeing the boys make it and Stacey make it, thought this is a breeze.  but I overestimated my dismount. or, I got nervous in front of Johnny. I remember Stacey laughing and pointing at me which I hated. usually landing on two feet. (wait til your knees burst). walking the rest of the way with mud caked up my left knee and not going home to change either. just bursting into 7-11 for more gum with pride. wayward, disheveled orphan of the block. all gumption and big pockets. took more than usual that day just to prove I could.  it was losing I hated. didn’t mind so much the feeling of the dirt.

and then the spots of poison ivy hidden. I am courageous in charge and always tactile, touching everything I come across. and smitten with my mind. only listening for my name, otherwise, running my fingers across every greenery within sight. now poxed.  rubbing the perlicue against the knuckle of the other hand and letting the sst out. my face swollen and red so the guys in my class think I got in a fight. smirk. never tell them anything..  the relief of it. and almost moaning as I ran the prong of fork down my leg. scraped it along my calves. dug in at ankles.sst. poking each patch of red, hard like I’m trying to make a fat lip, then dragging it back up again. watching the blood run down. the effect of effect cooling me more than calamine.  then getting the washrag for that. inhaling the copper scent. licking it off a dirty nail bed. yeah, I liked the way blood felt
and  looked
and smelled
sometimes.

“the itch game”

I fight the urge
to dip my fingers
into the running
garbage disposal.
challenge mechanism
designed to fillet
with one pressurized
tip.

I could be the one
preserved.

“Saturn in Scorpio”