and love?
I want this thing gone
so I can be alone with my tea
and good ideas.
he says,
name your torture
there are two giant
bruises on each thigh.
“but I don’t get it. are you ava? cat? which?”
there was a fecund air tonight and i was distracted by it. the waft. the dissolving cell.the way visions suddenly pop into view and I
“who are you?” he said.
I was in the cave of masters. circling. looking at my growing purple nails. but im also in a fire midtown and
“Well I am Artemis and.” look up and
it always starts with well. i can’t believe I found you. but some things you don’t say out loud.
“and.”
“and there is a mouse in my pocket, friend.”
“but I don’t get it. are you ava? cat? which?”
there was a fecund air tonight and i was distracted by it. the waft. the dissolving cell.the way visions suddenly pop into view and I
“who are you?” he said.
I was in the cave of masters. circling. looking at my growing purple nails. but im also in a fire midtown and
“Well I am Artemis and” look up and
it always starts with well. i can’t believe I found you. but some things you don’t say out loud.
“and.”
“and there is a mouse in my pocket, friend.”
smile real big to show him your spiny canines.
been picking at my lip
again. old childhood
habit–squeezing
corner of my
mouth for minutes at a time
so it forms into a blister.
digging my nail into the blister
just for the feel of it.
sometimes poke it with a safety pin
as i stare into the mirror.
watch it get fat and black.
my mother called it“pleasure pain.”
masochism is a desire for salve,
relief from the pain and often
finding yourself blindfolded in a
blade-lined hallway.
you gotta feel your way out.
the little girls say.
he’s also saying a lot so
I just nod a lot.
besides the impulse to
jump off a bridge every
day, I am not totally sure
why I am here.
“do you have any plans to hurt yourself?”
he asks in earnest but in a way that
he never looks directly at me.
im hot and walked for miles so im
a bit stuck to the vinyl,
sweaty and squirming but otherwise
pretty, presentable and
what’s done is done.
but I don’t say anything.
just shake my head
and bite my lip.
lift my thigh slowly to
feel the stretch of skin
and pray for some other
thing to take me.
or for the little girls to stop
but they’re snickering now.
“Belladonna”
I really miss your hands on me.
the way you held me in
sullen incubation.
I remember the oldest incantation:
the thrust I was given,
some gleaned anticipatory luck:
God gave you a chance and
an unfinished smile.
we needed a spark.
I grin full tooth to show you
my new porcelain canines.
light the match.
now the frame is melting
and so am I.
in the cradle of tar black trees,
I fight the urge to bow
and suddenly tiptoe
all around you;
two inches taller than you remember
and my tongue hot
hits your neck like a
wet quill.
hold your breath.
wait
for some other current to take me.
bite your skin.
let the tips of my
fingers dig in and
always remind them;
there are no exits.
“chrysalis”
Little pieces of me
in a dark cave
talking to the hooded masters.
This place I visit often.
First a fire then later
a push off a cliff to get
to the fucking bottom of it.
And today, changed into my true shape,
unpinched waist and
very short hair.
Always cloaked in white.
She’s faceless, all palms
but the glintis bright.
“If you want to die
so badly, here’s
the knife.”
“ketamine #2”
This next section is called
“I’m Worried About You”’
What did grief do?
It opened me up.
Made me think.
Made me alone and
do a lot of drugs.
“the Ketamine Series”
I have a lot of visions of being dead
sometimes as I sit there,
they make their make way across my mind.
a truck, the bridge,
knife to body,, visions of me
screaming, or hanging by a rope and
now finally being held by someone,
visions of me snotty and
pleading and seizure coming
on.
“You’ve never had to give up anything,”
she says.
I nod, sort of
wither while I’m there,
clutch the white and yellow
plastic I found right outside her
house.
careful not to put it in your mouth in front of her
I am in my (12th house),
pencil skirt.
(the one imprisoned in loss).
sweater, and my computer
sits idle on my lap.
“I bet you had an easy life,”
she says.
this is my 7th job: case
management. this is my fifth time
nodding out. I am somewhere else
screaming over a toilet,
letting the brain stomach the
powder that makes me euphoric.
they call it an opiate.
“I bet you haven’t suffered.”
It’s 10:30 am,
in five years half of my family
will be dead, my friends absent,
alone in an apartment pre eviction,
cloistered by pandemic,
visions of me dying all long
when you do the rituals, do they make you feel safe?
burgeoning addiction coming back
and the pain.
opiates help pain
the fucking endless pain.
the endless walks to nowhere
yes the rituals make me feel safe.
the vomiting and dizziness,
aches. fret.
but not yet.
“So you can’t relate.”
“Safe”
i’m draped in
fluorescent lighting,
mollifying.
I come to myself
collapse on top
of the thing playing
footstool
before he stretches out his back,
bored house cat.
licks the cream from an inner thigh.
my unpolished toes curl
in revulsion.
chairs squeak;
someone coughs and
adjusts the lights,
I blot my mouth and cheeks
with an embroidered handkerchief
whose initials aren’t mine.
find my heels.
pull my blouse over my tender chest,
try not to look in any mirrors
on the way out
and notice the exit sign
shimmering,
more red
than usual.
“how we meet”
I lacked honesty.
I portrayed a happy buoyancy,
a lightness to my character
that implied some solid
stable
support and my life
and when they were lucky enough to get
to know me, to see this
very lonely,
very pointed woman.
barbs
all
down
the
stomach
and a persistent moodiness
managed often by drugs.
they didn’t question when
i licked the powder off the table.
or gulped the last of wine from bottle.
when i became substance personified,
relieved I’d found a way to hush,
smile, walk again
for miles. to leave
them.
daturamoon.com 