mood swings,
kind of mired in
a circular prophecy
she keeps repeating.
silent in spurts,
frozen when alarmed but
then bursts in and says:
“are you fucking
watching me?”
like we’ve been talking
all this time.

and I haven’t even
spoken to her
or interacted with
her in months

but were you watching her?

i mean yeah.

“how guys save me in their phone #11”

let her tongue trail
like she liked it.
slow.

I thought she liked it.

she was wearing a pink bob,
pink glitter lined her lids
and eyebrows and
two white roses, stickers,
were stuck to each corner
of her eye.

when she pressed her lips
to the tip,
I felt it like she was
there with me.
like she was doing it for me.
like she knew I was watching
or would be watching eventually.

and when I came,
I said her name
aloud but
s l o w l y
like she likes it.

“how guys save me in their phone #9’ or “synchronicity’

“we cannot alter history by ignoring it.”
-audre lorde

sometimes after being at Ashley’s, I would lie down in my bed and picture rubbing myself on top of her. then I would take my pillow and place it gently over my face and press hard.

“the pillow game”

at night, I found most of my pleasure. though fearful of her shade, dusk enveloped me and molded me into something different. a curious explorer.  at six years old, I touched myself to a tingling sensation that was indescribable and secret. it became an obsession to see how far I could push myself to brink. not knowing there was a completion, I walked the edge and stopped. stopped before I came. 

I also walked the corridor alone, shaking, sometime past midnight. would turn my attention to a certain finger reaching across the wall and scream. wake the whole house. I wore blue footie pajamas, carried a security blanket and sucked my thumb for comfort. I often left the bedroom, panicked and drawn to some corner to stare. watch a passing headlight reveal a plant. or the quiet of the court kept me frozen in trance. some veiled thing looming near the mirror bowing to me and I swear it touched my shoulder. could feel the whoosh of her claws graze my neck. my brother said the worst thing about me was that shrill fucking scream. you always give it away.

learned to bring myself to cliffs.
learned to walk the dark in terror.
learned to shut my teeth so tight I wore the
pearl white enamel to grit.
learned to moan in silence.
learned to shriek so loudly no one rested
in my fits.
these things are important developments
to nail before menarche.
before we learn to get it right, we learn to shake
our bodies like
starving little kittens,
soundless, delicate.
face up to the eye dropper
of milk, thankful
for the pity.

“the corridors”

we used to do it behind Ashley’s house. one of us would lean against the wall and the other would wrap her two eager hands around her neck until she either fell to the ground or began shaking. Megan passed out the most and didn’t believe in safe words. I enjoyed the blackness and the dots that formed but they always let go. sometimes we did it to ourselves and alone which is dangerous. back in my room, on my bed, pushing as far back on my throat as I could, tongue bulleting through the teeth with desperation. I enjoyed the oblivion.

I enjoyed the way darkness
pervades and the tingling
of skin when things
fall away.

“the choke game”

we spent a lot of time in the dark screaming long before this night arrived. i’ve lived in dreams mostly, seeking oblivion. to find it like this, as sudden and furtive as promised. a side eyed stare and devout paranoia then a suffusing. a surrender.  a melting of my pulse into the spot between your shoulder blades. my scalp tingling as you peel my head away, hands deep in the fine auburn strands.

I can’t handle a long stare.

there is a spot no one knows about. it’s timing–not physical or found. metronomic. it starts with your hand around my throat. my body distant from her anxious shiver. .closer to death, the soft vein of you, your lust. the difference between my previous desire and this is the feel of soft finger asphyxiating. fulfillment. a want that is fed and no fear.

you take my breath away.

then the letting go.
the descent,
doll on your chest hair
and the long stare.

“The breath game”

my father knew me. even when my mom and I painted the same identical portrait at the Paint and Twist, he was able to guess which one mine was because I “always took up more space.” he saw me. I was seen by him. to be seen by someone and to emulate them and to grow distant from them to then try to get closer. how tragic. I hate this. I turn the water off.  

I had a dream of the Tysons the night before and I could see now that I had been dreaming of them for days. they were summer friends. the friends I spent with at the pool. they were both on the swim team but I couldn’t get up at six am or commit to sports. I was an excellent swimmer though. unafraid too. I used to dive off the high dive. I always told myself the same thing. it will be over by the time you remember even doing it. by the time you leap, you will have hit the water. I just had to be careful not to go to far forward or my calves would smack the water. I was good. I hated if I did it and no one saw. I’d have to do it again.  I turned to face the tile. I didn’t want to live in reverie or the past but just feel the loss of that ability. both the bravado and the lung capacity, the daring, the quickness. I was a rival to all the boys at the pool. I could outswim them. out dive them. hold my breath longer, touch the bottom faster and this was a great deal to me. not just the competition which was fun, but the new sport. the new game: the boys. always ranked above us and better than us before we even had a chance to form an opinion about innate abilities–who is better at swimming men or women? it’s always men. then women. I didn’t want to be the first of all the girls. I wanted to be the first of the whole pool. I wanted to date the top boy. or whatever we did at nine. be my crush. buy him Now n’ Laters. watch him get tan and smile only at me. 

this time I’m obsessed with depth. my cheek is cool resting on the bathroom wall and I commit to feeling the way the tile rubs back against me. how long I’ve really been thinking about my childhood vs. how long I have been twisting slowly to get to this place. the other side of the tub or just a new arrangement. I still couldn’t focus my eyes so I stared at the white linoleum. clean.  last time I  was obsessed with dirt. this time I’m obsessed with depth. at the same stage. this beginning burst where your body is beginning to acclimate as you warp into the thing you are seeking: clarity, forgiveness, hope. water. swimming. I look back down at the tub floor and watch  my feet again and then slowly drop my hands in the water. watch my hands again. see the faded heart ripple. I have more than five hours of this left. 

I am a nihilist,
nobody had to teach me
that and no men
held that void quite like
I can hold that void.
they mocked me and I let
them, mired in my
constructed reality I now feel
a thirty year repression
birthing from a well,
from a heavy pour
and it carries eels like
lightning, the nose
of sharks, their discarded
clean-picked bones like
past betrayals coming next.
you like rain?
a little deluge for your
flight.

I feel no obligation
to anything:
my rectitude,
our plans,
or my penciled tips
on how to revitalize
warehouse row,
I’m tired and
my want for self grows and ends
in impatient provocation,
your spiral notebook,
the bottom of the ocean
as the engine fails.
and you say
well, anything can be
contained in a cloud.

to which I reply,
catastrophe as well
“the well”

well, they always start
the same way:
in winter. it always starts in
winter when I am my weakest.
unsettled,

raving at the window,
the frost,
the cracks in my joints announcing
themselves in arthritic temper.
  manic
during the darkest months,
at times I know I should
be sleeping but  I am reaching
for anything that reaches
back.

in truth, I am a nihilist and
men didn’t teach me that
nothing ever matters and
nothing is ever coming back.
I watch my days get dragged away by tides
that become encroaching swells
and think to myself,
well, it always starts
with a storm.

“the storm”