we’re lying on the edge of October
in thick cotton nests;
my place.
my thigh wrapped in burgundy nylon and your
loosening grip.
I held the space between our necks
with stoicism,
a revisionist past that kindly removed
the details of the ephemeral contract,
a fevered longing for binding shielded by my
tepid forecast.
I was drawn to your morbidity and
we had similar graves to tend.

handed me a handkerchief for my deepening cough
and didn’t notice the sudden mollifying in your fingers
where I reached and held gaze;
your eyes like fountains I sipped in my July dehydration,
a nourishing after months of asexual experimentation,
mouth the word queer to the mirror,
how to fuck yourself from different positions
and forget you ever came.
I thought autumn meant morning frost but it was eight am
and I was deathly hot
for it and you were,
back facing me
reminding me of our agreement
tying a shoe and I blew my nose,
handed you some andalusite to suggest
all healing is pragmatic but you
absorb organs,
pick one good one,
move on.
we had different ways of saving ourselves.

I met you in skin and sun
and distant cicada sounds,
street jazz in the background.
met me where I was
(liquefying)
and made no promise to keep me.
you unrolled your tongue
and the palm of your hand holding your girlfriends’
tiny waist and a note that I’ve read,
god, a thousand times before,
but still cuts like the first fall
that said
ha! ha! nothing ever changes!

you taught me about unsustainability as a relationship model,
how to rip nylons off with my teeth and
leave;
the orgasm of the shattered pieces
that you squeeze to fit into each crevice of weaning;
masochism as a finish line;
and me,
which all seems no better than the men but
   (well, here we are)
so much softer in my hands.

“ha!ha!nothing ever changes!”

exhausted from the effort my
hips have made to
prove my might to
men,
I let her show you
with her flesh and borrowed guile,
more cultured manner,
a divine proclamation:

she summarizes
what I really meant
without all my nervous
containment and flustered
public self-flagellation.
she seems objective
so you trust her,
and she had a dream like that
once so you conclude
I am the cat that chased her,
skinned her,
wore her like a trap
you fell right into.
she is a mouse
wearing my mouth
and she is quavering.
I needed her to say the one
thing you had been thinking
but had yet to fully take
so I possessed the space
inside the shaking room
between us.

take a kneel.
I’m in your ear
wearing my best butterfly
costume.
      you could use something.
when you fall asleep,
why don’t you give way
to the chase?
you’ve watched me hunt you
every night this week
from the safety of my yard,
but here I feel your emaciation.
your ribs.
you are starved.
take a knee.
          take a run.
take your jaws and
put em on me.
I become the doe,
and you become the forest
trapping me.
            you could use something.

it’s time you taste
your own shaking
prey.

“spiritual practice”

“Name your torture,”
one of them said
with a cute wink.
I wanted an orchard
but I swallowed the vodka
he handed me
willingly.

I don’t believe in simplicity
or explaining the meaning behind things
            it’s why I write poetry
I say with a hint of clarity.
He fingers my locket,
I recoil in panic.
I choose the silence,
complicity over barreling ascension
every time I meet one I might
like.

I had a mission to destroy my darkness,
but darkness has a way of consuming
all it follows
so I spent the winter indoors.
started to explore and name every puncture:
early childhood rape,
early childhood confessional
in bad dreams and pissed sheets,
early childhood neglect without a male
role model or a safe space to yell about it,
early childhood sibling who later hung himself with
vodka ropes, and a funeral attended by
no one.    I swirl my glass,
listen to the chunks of ice beat me up
inside.
There are only two sentences I’m ever
after: birth
and subsequent fatality.
I do a quick twirl on the way to his bathroom
to show off  my scorpion tail
so he understands his options
for the night.

I asked him to stay awhile
while I calmed my own poltergeist.
he just wanted to hold hands
and watch me cry without connivance,
without adding words to delusion
alluding in silence
that I don’t need the completion.
I need the space
to see the illusions I created are
in dire need of straightening before my ire
turns to rueful violence,
turns to self-asphyxiation,
turns to creeping vines of fear threatening
to bind the whole garden in budding violence
and complacent nooses I wear boastfully,
as if the greatest power comes from murdering
yourself in front of an
audience.

My madness looms sometimes;
a distant thunder that never sparks but
erupts into sudden forest fire,
 lightning strikes right behind me
so you always know how to find me.
I only hear voices when they’re booming
so God usually delivers things in a way I hate
to get me to listen, breathe,
cut my own intestines from the ceiling
where I hang myself most days.
God demands I stay,
but I let go of his hand and
turn to him and say:

“Well, if you’re not going to kill me or fuck me,
what are you doing here
anyway?”

5.