when was the last time you wept?
I take the lighter and press it to
my lips. watch the skin burn away
into a red dot.
it doesn’t get better than this.
I learn to keep secrets again.
“the hospital series”
******
there were a lot of thoughts at once. I may be translating it incorrectly because there was a lot of pausing to take note of environment. to stand still in the tub. to sit still in the tub. was i standing? twist to the tile and press it and rest my face.feel the wet coolness. I don’t notice any grime in the cracks. was I talking? look up at my shower head dripping. hear the smoke alarm reminding me I need batteries. notice the cat wasn’t there. elucidate the room, vivacity. the sun through the window passing through the succulent’s chubby leaves to me, I want to drink them.. my thumb nail waving in a ripple as I try to find my reflection. the way my fingers can dance on top of water to make ripples. spent hours as a kid doing that. a constant movement to come back to nothing. to realize the want was nothing. my iterations: repetition, pressure, organization, pressure, time, people’s time, attention, pressure, validate the wound, pressure. my head full. my jaw clenched. my fingers around the straw. secret double life; my functioning a product of survival.
“It’s not what they think though,” when I speak like that I am referring to the idea that I can read motives of people and am not projecting.
I could be projecting. I am afraid too. Ebby sits on the corner now and watches me. her eyes are bright yellow. offer her my cheek to seduce her. we rub faces like that for maybe only three minutes. maybe five. I pull back and gaze at my arm. I go back to her face. gaze at my arm. back to her face and remember how she almost fell once trying to pet me.. I had been sitting closer to the tile with my back against it playing the ripple-fish game with her and she wanted to get closer. I have a scar going down my rib where she scratched me trying to stop herself from falling into the tub. she did fall. maybe six times now. it doesn’t bother me.” I have many scars .
“your skin heals fast but not your bones,” a psychic once said to me.
“I don’t care.”
but you do or you wouldn’t do it? a voice says.
I am uncomfortable. infinitely.
“I am humbled,” and I laugh because I didn’t expect any of this. nor the pandemic truly.
“I am humbled.”
with motive.
“ don’t show me my death.”
part 1: clairsentience, or The King of Cups
“I am a hard person because hardness is what comes from a life lived underground.”
rape.
say the word rape out
loud.
say I was raped.
say the word rape.
learn the word rape.
say I WAS RAPED.
hated and desired feel
the same to me.
I begin counting nemeses;
first in the area, then
further, some even abroad.
memories burst.
hated.
plus all the knives
all over the house.
desired.
they feel the same.
“Queen of Swords”
consumption is the theme.
consume me.
it’s the new moon in pisces,
3.13 2021.
made a playlist for this
it’s all winter 2017.
it’s sometime the summer 2018
and you send me a video of you
playing keyboard as I watch the sun
bleed from the clouds on acid
and a mushroom tincture.
combining plot points,
you synthesize too?
burned retinas, sigils for
this.
it’s the beginning of the pandemic 2020.
I’m in spain,
learned Spanish saints and their
prayers for this.
I’m in a bath.
I’m in your arms.
learned the lines of cathedral, loss.
I’m slowly cutting a line from my shin bone
to ankle with blade.
I’m in Philadelphia in the
middle of a warm bath
and just shot my head up and
gasped, birthed with severe
carpal tunnel so much that my shoulder
might be dead, it’s numb
and my wrist so bent so it’s
hard to open things, use spoons,
write my dreams and
inflammation,
two broken knees, a
closing throat, dysphagia,
growling stomach, thinning
clavicle and waist,
lockjaw, confused
but surmising I may be alive,
eh, I say out loud.
the child cannot bear to lose.
we have that going for us.
watch the soap bubbles swirl
my left hand, study the middle finger:
only a half a nail, I notice.
“ARTEMIS”
rub petals on my shoulders,
jawline. warm,
heather water.
feel their disintegration
in hand and
for the first time,
my fingertips found
utility, want.
feel the lift of the
veil. the word DAD appears
in lavender soap bubbles.
my nails are Easter purple pastel
and I remember the way my dad
said my name as I ran to collect
each plastic egg before anyone.
the child cannot bear to lose.
rubbing roses on the back of
my neck, feel the prick of the nail
cut in half, sharp like
a thorn.
I’d had a vision
of me slicing my fingers off as I chopped
watermelon and hours later, returning
to the yellow plastic cutting board
to clean before the ants found new congress,
I looked down to see the tip gone
from my nail , (look up)
lying upwards on the counter.
had no recollection of the event.
remember my dad saying
slow down be careful (name)
it’s all one long blur of
portending forethought
mushed by ingested substance.
indecipherable bursts of running,
planning, writing.
the indelible effects of
surge of memory as you finally
sit. begin to let the chest
rock, cry, and
a daring and
earnest coo when the
boy touches your scalp
for the first time.
“the 8th house of death”
I’m in a pink stream,
dragged by my hair,
some sensory acuity,
words come over me in charges,
sagacity, lust,
completion.
my lips are punch-colored,
moist, eyelids the
lightest of rose
and wide open.
there is no inquiry.
I’m not fascinated by the minutiae,
day to day, I’m looking at
each speckle on
a pupil; the way the
purple lights hit everything
in the room.
you’re not risk avoidant.
I’m in front of the mirror
again.
risk-directed, I engage
this way with myself, her
shifting apparitions as I
comb my eyebrows into something
stern, dark.
intimidate in silence.
told him to reach for a condom.
I’m in front of the mirror
upstairs, opening my mouth
to it.
I showed him my entire kitchen,
tonight– freshly scrubbed–
to offer him
water. he tapped
the black handle hiding behind a whiteboard
near the backdoor.
first drawn to the index card
with marker scrawl, a code
to self when I want more
to stop think about it.
then to the portion of plastic
behind it.
the way you hide knives is scary.
he lifts the brown box out of
the open wooden table
near the window in my room
to find the right one and
uncovers a lithe blade
underneath and limp;
without direction.
the expressions are priceless.
there were two there.
one near the pen that I keep
in case I need to jot something
down in the middle of the
night I’m a cheetah.
his eyes dart, glint stars and I’m draped
in mollified red up here, and
smooth from constant shaving
and lotion.
yeah, well I have yet to stab myself.
then feel it all pushed
inside of me,
entwined,
my hair pulled back.
“Artemis”
“the same dumb sun. the same possible horizon. beauty hurts. it enters me even as i have fortified myself to keep everything out.”
there is no way out.
I want to eat my way out,
fuck my way out
but I can’t.
I can’t.
I can’t.
the only way out is
to fall.
I fall in.
“the first wave”
daturamoon.com 