I used to leave class
in high school,
go to the bathroom stall
and masturbate whenever
I let dirty thoughts
build too long.
usually it wasn’t
the subject of the class
but the way a boy
brushed my sleeve
on the way to pick up
the beakers.
or the way my own forearm
grazed my nipple.

I used to ask men
to reach under blankets
at house parties
and touch me.
my shorts not so
tight they couldn’t
be pushed to one side.
I used to pay their
way in when there
was a cover,
crawl up their stomachs,
my mouth smelling
of Bud Light and
cigarettes and smiling
bright asking them
if they were still seeing
Mariel and if they wanted
to sit on the recliner.

I always had a spare
five dollars on hand,
at least three cigarettes
and a way to materialize
fire, a way to morph
into lap cat
for whomever I
craved.  my name
was a whispered name:
a baleful purr
of syllable in halls
swirling some girl’s man.

“the rooms”

you can find me in complete silence
in the corner.
medicinal fingers curved into myself,
into claws so no one gets the love.
I’m triggered by the music and pacing
in 9.9 cubic square feet
of psychosis.
I’m feeling my nails dig into 
my palm.
you say hello. 

you can find me frozen 
one week later,
woven in an opalite tapestry
spread across your floor.
I understand confession.
I’m Catholic.
I ask for judgment,
not counsel.
some retribution.
let’s make this clear.
let’s make this public.
I’m stuck in a projection
so you barely have a face
that isn’t my reflection.

at least I give you transparency.

“the warm salve”

you are both raging moon
and blazing sun,
and the child:
the wounded outcome. 

3.

no justice

all we have is each other.

Censorship and catcalling.

aging and sexism and catcalling

All that walking was me running away from myself but now I stand and face the terror of my feelings.

Who am I without want?

“sometimes I think they enjoy it.”

he placed the glass on a coaster as if it mattered.

“who is they?”

“predators. sometimes I think predators enjoy it.”

“do you enjoy it, sarah?”

I knew what he meant.

 “do you enjoy the kill?”

smiles don’t prove malefaction, they exhibit it.

“not the kill but the hunt.”

we sweat in silence for an instant. the water not cold enough. the apartment ablaze. my shelves sturdy and everything else in motion.

–responses from Hecate during meditation

We both laughed and I sort of jumped and twirled in the air with the giant stick and it was the lightness of it that kept me. The way that girls laugh. The way games start. The way we showed off to each other in the woods, and never a guy around until suddenly they were around all the time. We had spitting contests, cursing contests, stealing contests, cartwheel contests and the world was ours. We had frilly skirts but mostly mud-marked shorts and skinned knees and tangles in our hair that sometimes we combed for each other. We had secrets and secret language and secret games and a lightness, a buoyancy that carried us. If you asked me then, that day, if I really wanted to marry a king, I would have said only if I can live with all my friends in my castle.

”One never reaches home,” she said. “But where paths that have affinity for each other intersect the whole world looks like home, for a time.”

—Demian, Herman Hesse

I remove the rest of my top
and close my eyes deliberately
to show you the length
of each thorn.
wear my eyes like a hooked rose
with my tongue pressed
against your chin,
my lips trace
your jaw       I say
more softly
than  ever before,
having been tempered
and forced close:
you know,
darling,
let my teeth hit your lip

I have never
become divine without first
becoming storm.

 “ascension”

you? you will know me 

by my fang toothed 

smile.

“Wolfsbane”