but she says it accented;
hug people right when
they walk in the room.
and I don’t know how to
perfect her inflection
but I am now reflecting
on how I have yet to fuck
a man in this bedroom.
better for it, no
interruption in sleep
mostly, mugwort drenched
and drooling, ocean,
beaches,
drowning.

compartmentalize.
this is where men
beg to die, I
stand in front of an
antique writing desk,
riding crop on top,
flogger, feather duster,
blindfold.
the lights are red.

“this,” my arms spread
across the quilt. “is where I
dream of a way out.”
I am back in my bedroom,
practicing gratitude,
understanding conviction
is seventy five percent.
the rest is mere tenacity
to live. 

well,
get on with it then.

the third one I call is Artemis.

“Artemis”

in fact,
resilience is sometimes the
only consolation.
so hold that tight
at night
like flesh.

“doors #12”

 mine. these things are mine. I didn’t call ghosts this time. well. I did look over though and I did invite them, the three of them, gently though like a cough. just if they wanted to come as protection. I use dogs. I feel most protected in pack. it was hard to look at the picture of my dad with his oxygen on and know this was coming. the image of the woman crying on top of the man in Midsommar. losing your whole family, being orphaned, flashes of this and then glancing at Ebby and her yellow eyes on the corner. she is perched and watching. this is when I want the plain white room but I had an image of me in a straight jacket. how awful that would feel. not to move. I want less of this pressure. I think take the pressure off.

I lay my head so I can see Ebby and so I can also see this other fox to the left of me. an old framed painting. I look at my hand. I have one golden heart drawn near the top of my left wrist. a tradition I always do to mark the first hour: mark it on my hand with sharpie in the form of a heart.  a reminder that I am on drugs. that I must both submit to them and challenge them at the same time but to remember my processes are distortive by initiation. my intention was to distort things. I got up to move the items on my night table. I admired it. I had uncovered it. I had recently draped it with a red Spanish shawl, but I had just reorganized the nightstand which was soothing now. I could see inside of it, everything stacked neatly: flashlight, box cutter, pepper spray, boxes of superstitious things and aromatherapy oil.  I wanted to be able to find pens quickly, knives quickly. the table  was a gift from a friend before she moved to LA: an antique wooden table, two pieces that stack and an opening inside, where I kept all my dream journals and the others. condoms too.

“no one has ever fucked me in this bed,” I say aloud.

also this is 2020. keep up.

*******

When I was very young, I used to stare at my closet sort of squinting. I first had this ugly brown accordion style door on it that my parents eventually replaced with a soft, translucent pink curtain that had tiny little circles for texture. My closet had clothes and my bookshelf. When I closed my eyes, I could see the curtain create patterns. Well, I squinted and I could see colors and I began to emote not through me but through the child I imagined. Wait, back up. That may be complex.  Imagine what happens after you look at the sun: you get those circles, those oil slick dots, in your retina. I could do that by closing my eyes hard and then opening them fast. Or pressing on my eyes and then opening them. The curtain would look like it was moving and bleeding light. I could feel things move from it. When I wanted to be alone, I just laid on my bed staring at the closet.

 I imagined a small girl that looked like me at the edge. She couldn’t really leave the room. Like a twin sister. But better than me. She existed right next to me, parallel, everywhere I went. But she couldn’t exactly leave. Like she was chained. (Well, she went somewhere at night). And she was better than me.

The difference between her and I was her hair. She had long flowing beautiful brown hair. We told each other stories. We dared each other to do things. We played pretend a lot and

 
we
were
witches

she said. I remember everything.

“the woman who walked out of walls” or “the mirror”

I’d be hard pressed
not to tell you what a doe-eyed
impression you leave:
silk chest, moans
to emasculate yourself
and the way
your mouth dropped open
when I opened the door.
that I recorded.
when you smiled, twisted my nerves
searing sheath, uncovering,
I’ll remember that.

I’m looking up at you
about to laugh
but know better,
learned to lie still in
quake. I spend days
rehearsing affection
in the mirror.
your hands are kind of
loose
around my neck even though
you said you’re boss.
you’re honest to god
the sweetest, warmest thing
I’ve ever met.
I grab your forearm
and dig my nails in.
practicing being
pithy about certain things,
guarded,
I snap my teeth shut.
please.

I’m trying not
to laugh.
my knees hurt.
my chin is cupped by
your palms.
your hand is loose
around my neck
I say it again,
harder.
hit me.
please.
choke me.
kill me.
fuck.

“the masochist”

I’m in the doctor’s office
trying not to laugh
as he keeps pressing me
“what was your father like?”
I don’t have time quite frankly.
this man is asking me if I ever
feel like I am watching myself from
outside of my body.
I say sincerely,
sounds like you think I’m a ghost.

I’m trying not to laugh.

he is outlining various traumas
I may have experienced in my life:
my drinking,
my family’s drinking,
my previous assaults by men.
we talk MS, autoimmune
components.
we talk allostatic load,
latency of neglect,
the firing of nerves.
the confusing compression.
I’m just talking about the mirror
and gesturing a lot to the air
about the fact I asked for it
and then my legs went numb.

that was the first time,
I say.
when I asked for her to enter me.
before, she did it without asking.
I nod as if he is
answering the questions.
    get on it with then.

Sir, I am possessed.
I don’t have time for this.
I stand up,
suddenly able to walk again.

“LILITH”

send him a polaroid
of one tear rolling down
your cheek and don’t tell him
you got suntan lotion
in your eyes.
and don’t drown in the bath.
prove your
f ee l i ng
and that you have
f ee l i n g sss.
when I was a child,

colors came out of walls
to talk to me and said:
to survive
place yourself in a box.
there was a room of girls
and we would tell stories.
I live in a box.
it’s about

10 x 10.
and when I walk,
it moves with me.
and one of them says in
a British accent, get on
with it then.
10 x 10
and I am screaming inside.
and everyone wants to

see me cry
and my mouth is
set sternly but
more importantly,
I have had a recurring vision
that I will kill myself
over and over I watch myself
leap off the bridge.
I just have to not kill
myself and I get to walk right
out the ancestral curse
and you’d think
well certainly
easier
than crossing
a tightrope
or tricking someone

but the thing is
get on with it then
this box. 

“the box”

I ignored his question,
showed him the
callous on my palm,
referencing my need
to grip.
sometime I have rough sleep,
that’s all, I shrug the bruise
off.
he licks my hand  with his tongue
without questioning my need to
hold everything so tightly
I’ve succumb to carpal tunnel,
arthritis, delusions of
grandeur and infancy.

“has anyone ever talked to you about splitting?”
the doctor asks.
where am I?
I was twisting the straw
in my fingers, contorting my
face and confessing things,
sometimes i like to shoplift.
“Who is Catarina?”
the doctor asks.
numb.
“splitting is a phenomenon in which you sort of leave your body
to allow another persona
to take over.”
the doctor says.
sometimes I like to squeeze worms in my fingers
until they pop.

          “like possession?”

my posture is severe,
having been found hunched over I am
upright, hands crossed and
waiting.
sometimes I peek at Christmas presents.
“no, more like split personality.”
the doctor is taking notes and
eyeing me so intensely, I almost
laugh. don’t tell him my name
is Arachne. not
yet.

sometimes I watch the mirror dance in candlelight
            and wait for her to come in
              I break men
like the swell that rises over bridges
engulfing islands with her mouth,
we break men with turns of
tides.

“(redacted), have you ever felt like you were standing outside
of yourself?”

we break men with
dulcet metronomy,
or the way words do:
harm.

“Poltergeist”

I don’t like to talk about my
house so I don’t
but the garage
is gone and so is everything
that was in it.
the christmas decorations
from my childhood,
oil painting of my mother
(asbestos),
all our halloween decorations.

my
childhood bedroom is gone
and so is everything that was
in it except for one soccer
cleat my mom found when
my dad died.
one day the sink
will collapse. it’s leaning.
the walls are so soft
with water and mold
we can’t fix anything.
we
have snakes
in there.
giant water bugs and
crickets and
slugs and  I have no
yearbooks. I have a couple
notes from my friends
and a swath from a cologne sample
my high school lover
used to wear between
fucking his wife and me
accompanied by a note
he wrote me once:
there is wine in the fridge.
but I am thinking of
myself younger 

than that,
a shoebox of tokens

and the old lip gloss bottle,
a roller, vanilla scented
but pink
that I had saved because it
reminded me of an entire
freezing december
on my crush’s bench
where sometimes he let me
wear his sweatshirt
when I left my jacket home.
I am holding my hands to the ground,

feeling vines wind up
my calves.
repeating,
muttering.
what rolls off my tongue in
these heavy fits of consternation.
the way they describe me to the
ambulance: someone who
looked like she saw the horizon
close in on her and
collapsed.
the way they describe me
to the first responder
is that I looked to be seized
by terror like she saw the
horizon closing in and
just fell
to the ground. 

“Persephone”