it’s called “arithmomania” 

but I made like ugh a whole ritual
around it so I bound myself to 3.

And what does 3 mean?

it means that my oven timer is gonna
start going off at 3:33 again if I’m
not careful about what I relinquish
in time.

“the oven timer time” or “arithmomania” or “there is no time”

lick the salt from the crest
underneath my elbow
where the flesh is softest
and ask me where I’d like
to live most.
it’s a spot I never tell
them about.

you feel something in me,
something growing.
you know I’m antsy
to grow the
space between us large enough
to span separate states
and you
let your lips rest there.the polar vortex
has passed:
it’s Saturday
and the sun is out.
I am lying on my side
facing a bookshelf
that is only
half unpacked
nearest the crack in the
window and I feel a
breeze.   I hear
a sparrow call.
I hear a car pull away
and feel a wet tongue trace
the blue vein underneath
the skin of my arm
in wonder.
my hands contain
a spate and yet
you hold them.

drunk from my fingertips,
I hear you say the slow word
I strangled:
s t a  y.

“Saturday,
and the sun is
out.”

———-

sparkling explosion of
cellophane, celebration basket
and champagne nails tickling birthmarks
 down the back.

fallen glitter eyeshadow
dances on a throat like
roving crescent moons
from everywhere a lip hit
forcing pieces of gold dust
to roll off my nose.

the mattress is bare now.

ghost stories and berries in bed,
mouths filled with laughs.
I’m in an afghan
sinking my teeth into a shoulder,
straddled with bare feet
and bravado drips from every
inch of me
     and what else?

I’m somewhere else.

“The Long Maul

I just have to make rent.

this is how thoughts start
and then ten years go by
and you’re still spiraling
like you hadn’t found the answer
but really you just
have to make rent.
that was my first priority
and I think I may be a masochist

which could wait just
keep everything in some sort of order.
focus on the task.
the one thought as I open
the door to the mid-August heat,
89 degrees which is nothing compared to
the south that can swallow you whole
in one boiling breeze and I’m out of
my now near empty row home
that you cleaned almost all the way
out before you left
except the dirty armchair, old couch–
all the furniture found.
all the dishes donated.
everything I left come back,
everything  in my life circuitous 

like my anfractuous spine
that stood straight once but
fractured under the weight
of this constant need to materialize
public ovation and actual groceries and
the ability to discern between a happy
thought and an actual hand to hold.
I become the reed reaching deep
for it 

but bent,
sinuous,
cracked.

I.

“i dont want to be known.
i dont want anyone to know me.”

12/29/2018

“am I always the lamb?” 

I envisioned myself crying earlier and then I felt the beginning ripple as I stood on my bedroom floor, suddenly up again.  I wanted to stay lying down but the shadows all over my walls moved. movement is the execution of all things. I could feel it rise in me.

I think of Hecate. this is what you asked for. this what you got. nothing. I started to sob, loud and childlike. knowing that your parents will vanish and so will your childhood. the house full of mold, soft. falling down. having hardly any remnants left of it living. many other things are gone too like my half my family, and my yearbooks. the structure of my nuclear family is  dissolving. well your dad is dying, darling. I say this to myself in a British accent cuz now the little girl I named Lilian is talking and she
literally
knows
everything
that will happen to me

i’m  heartbroken. missing so much of my childhood that will never be again or be seen again. the house itself  rotting. it will be abandoned. it will be torn and something will be rebuilt on the land. I cannot explain or mention these things in passing, therefore I don’t get into them at all with friends.  here I am still, standing, facing the cream of the wall between paintings. 

only a second of my mushroom trip has gone by.

I’m invincible only if
carried everywhere.
people don’t change,
move to the nightstand

throw the dinosaur
you mailed me away.
the birthday card he gave me.
the set of text exchanges.
people don’t change.
I empty the whole plastic
bin, clear the petals from his
roses, sneeze,

make room for lipstick.

“the act of losing things”

who I pay homage to in the
corners of the night
is really no one’s
fucking business.

2.

I used to sing
fairy tales to my closet
to see if the curtains would move.

1.

there is a peace in exposure
and a peace in silence.
and I still can’t discern
where I fit completely.
sometimes I  flit about town
with my paper point tongue
and become the trap for them.
other days I sit quietly

rearrange my stones
to surround pieces of paper
with words scribbled;
a symptom of caution

 
when people say they are superstitious,
they usually mean they
don’t walk under ladders
or keep broken mirrors,
or if you’re Russian,
put your purse or keys directly
on the table.
when I say it,
I mean that if I think
about something too long
it  grows legs
and walks out 

so I can see it better.

I begin to line the doors
with salt and brick dust;
the tub with black tourmaline
and smoky quartz. I
begin to line the bed with
kitchen knives and then
I begin to chant the
names of lives
I want to enter me.

“1/1/2017”