imagine being so hard on yourself that you’d rather die, than face yourself ever again. 
these postcards may not be clean yet, but I am extremely proud of myself for allowing my mind to wander enough to produce enough templates to understand that I actually am watching a book synthesize without knowing the end result when I started. that’s: unlike me, what was suggested I do, and how I learned to trust my intuition wholeheartedly. and it’s better than I expected (it always is). 
no bra
and a weak smile,
mildly uncomfortable with
the idea of asking anything
more than how are you?
visible tan lines and big eyes,
hourglass and
a mostly untrained sex appeal,
a mostly stifled violence,
mostly mute when questioned,
always suddenly falling
silent.
how are you?
lost, giving me
directions and
grimacing at the
passing time.
“how guys save me in their phone”
spend too much time in scrutiny
and you find knives
in your hands.
11.
in fact,
resilience is sometimes the
only consolation.
so hold that tight
at night
like flesh.
11.
I believe in wormwood,
dried root,
my brother’s ashes
in a silver heart,
a ceramic urn,
a chant, a poem.
datura when the time
is right.
sometimes I do ceremony,
sometimes I just let things pass.
we do that for others:
carry our grief quietly,
we bury things deep
within ourselves.
but sometimes in a fit,
I spill over,
tell you everything.
you said
I like to swim
so I am braised with razor;,
become a carnation lake
at your feet and
you said rain,
I like gardens.
so I condensed and
waited to show off my new arms
lined in fresh alyssum.
my cycle: I always meet them in
winter where my only
light is moon.
my flowers blossom
under the chilled night:
drip a dark nectar and
I am thirsty and
you already know,
I believe in
altar.
I believe in overflowing
chalice. you believe in holding
space for growl,
holding me with
distance.
you watch me lay the
dill in bowl, line the bed
with tourmaline.
run the bath with
chamomile and yarrow.
I am full of tincture now.
I can move like a jaguar:
slow and black and
hungry.
I am hard to see that way.
you said
I am game.
you’ve been watching
jaguars move,
you’ve been memorizing motion,
you said
I’ll be around
and I drape myself in constellation
so you can better see me,
storm so you can better feel
me and I traipse across the forest
floor waiting to be found.
my tonsils growing
chelicerae,
my rib cage growing legs,
my bottom becoming fat
with thread and
I know what you like
and I know that
you are game.
you are writhing
game in tiny, tiny
snowflake threads
hung far above the
ground.
I said let’s switch places
and I know you said
my name. I become the woods
encircling your howl and
you become the kicking,
screaming, young and
drowned.
in winter,
it is long and dark
and hard to contain my
grief. I
am gorged with nectar
and hidden by
the wind.
sometimes we do that for
others: hide our
spines.
you watch me prey;
sip the drip of
the effulgent crescent
bulb I worship
and become the
nightmare you fear.
you become the shivering
deer, caught fly,
gutted bunny on my
jaw.
I become the bath
of blood.
you were right:
we’re the same.
rewind to the night you asked
if I would ever kill someone
if I knew I could get away with
it. the butterfly effect
demands a death.
we become the woods
in dream and you become
my game.
“datura moon”
“Everything has happened.”
–Sylvia Plath
I need it gone,
please, it can’t stay,
I am speaking out loud without
realizing suddenly snap back to present
in the middle of a dark prayer,
in the middle of washing the dishes
contemplating when and where
and how to do it;
just jubilant yesterday that is what
disease does, it festers
and pokes you when you’re
good, when you have a taste of
joy on your tongue and you’re
ready to sing and the next thing I know
I’m saying:
I’m going to kill myself soon.
if not today, tomorrow
and I look at my cats
and I make the motions of crying
and remember the end of the poem
I read: think, on the brink of
your death, I am asking you
to think.
it always strikes during my domesticity.
whenever I am practicing chores,
I feel it.
I put the straw down to use my hands
and I feel it:
the interminable prison of head,
of daydream, of coma
that I laugh about in public
but it’s twisting me
in crooked shapes
and I have held the ineffable,
or rather it held me.
an arm around my stomach
near a window,
my mind was blank.
I suffer from chronic suicidal ideation
and I haven’t cried in years,
I begin to the invisible audience.
I’m starting to pace,
lie down plan ways to face
it or fashion the rope
or grab the blade or jump
the bridge or anything at all
to speed up the ending and
I asked if I could please get help
without telling anyone this time
and then I choked on a cherry pit
causing a panic attack causing a
light cessation of breathing.
you don’t know you value yourself
until you are faced with two options:
let it or fight.
but I called 911
and the EMT took me to the crisis center
when I told them I can’t quite
tell the difference between
fantasy and reality.
the way men think I lie,
they’re right.
I never tell them how many
plans I’ve drawn for suicide.
today, I dropped the straw,
started crying.
and you don’t believe anything I say,
but there is no time to coddle you.
everything has happened.
the thirteenth draft was suicide,
but I didn’t know it yet
and people really do try.
God won’t let me.
feelings subside.
the way some watched me
suffer, I forgave it all.
the way I sobbed
in the hospital.
the way they said:
it’s not clean, you’re right.
the way the pit lodged.
the way I had been picturing the woman
grinding the cherry
seeds to make cyanide earlier
in the afternoon.
the way I was seeking adjectives
for distant unconditional love.
the way I told someone over dinner
it’s called “The Woman Who
Saw Her Own Death.”
the way endings can change
without warning.
the way I quit my job.
the way it’s so unlinear.
the way God’s sweeping
fingers cradle you in darkness
and something says:
yes, that was the way it was
then, but now we begin
again.
how quickly I grabbed
the phone in terror
implies commitment to staying
here; there is no one
here to comfort
but I hold that
tight at night
like flesh.
12.
it hurt
but not as much
as memory;
not as much as looking back.
death reversed,
they called it.
and not as much as hearing it
on the bridge.
I told you so
not as much as living long
enough to see you go and
slip and live frozen
underneath the giant
white sheaths of ice
where I leave you to unravel
in a dream.
where I leave
you
for the last time.
a spider said to
write it
that was rule number two.
you can call it the
act of taming things.
they’ll think it’s about you.
get them to read it out loud
and curse themselves.
when I danced with her night
that night,
she whispered,
say my name
and you are mine
I woke up in silk
and horns and you were
flying: a bright, blue butterfly
right into my arms,
my web of lines.
“switched places”
I’m a martyr
so I like my last lines to
linger chill you;
bring you back here
to finish me.
I’m hanging over your bed at night
like a decaying canopy
causing some coughs,
some fits of temperature,
a rotten synopsis of my
irrationalization;
my constant adieu in drama and boot heels
clicking further from you.
my lips in the rearview:
red as fresh hell,
soft like fresh pain,
your new lover is plain
wrapped in old sheets where I used to explode,
an improvised painting:
billowing carnality drawn open to reveal
a euphonious home, soldier heart;
sparked and smoldered from the start,
glossy eyes and reaching fingers and I’m
cracking at the edges when I hear
your name.
a broken backbone replete with
your ex lover’s stain,
unnatural twist,
unnatural bow towards your new lover’s
place.
unslept, unkept, unkempt bangs and sweat,
breasts heave, fall, beg for response
and your lips once returned the question mark with a
declaration, a finality,
laconic exclamation mark and charged fuzz
nesting on my lap.
can she feel the lake I was for you?
you, a sly river stone, sinking to the the bottom of
the nearest wet bed.
I’m dry now but
slippery like a seraphic harpoon
catching you on good days;
Saturdays in the park watching the clouds rewrite the sky
and her and I’m stuck
to your dick,
grip you hard and lit like a cosmic albatross
shadowing you nightly.
Sunday night when you’re resting with loss,
American Spirits and a cat who can’t cut it,
I’m hovering all week
you’re brainstorming ways to save the world at work,
and I’m in your coffee mug.
you’re choking on my suitor’s dried intentions:
guzmenias, spider plants, handful of daisies,
calendula, roses from the uninspired,
whatever I ask for.
watered down apologies, post it notes reminding me
where they will be
(forever haunting beds)
and shrinking cocks recoiling at the sight of such
rehearsed malignance.
I want my parting to be
harder than us:
a seizure in your stomach,
a rift in your lungs
where I used to rest my hands to feel the songs
you had for me
but your honeyed lips too thick with
other people’s crusted blood
to talk about it;
about us.
a zephyr in your hair that tickles,
sticks to your crown and moans loudly;
the way I sound when I come:
a saint dying at your altar tongue.
a parade on your timeline,
the last firework,
the first thunderstorm,
the first time someone hints at
love
and the interminable door slams
shut.
me, I’m self effacing only in lines,
only in verse.
humbled by stark correction,
a closed fist perhaps,
a silent light that sets you on fire,
drowning in self,
an ocean as well,
insides rocking
tidal laments that implode in quiet, wild
violence,
stalking the world’s line,
biding mine with letters
and blades my time;
stifled, I’m waiting
for that envelope
you promised
reminding me I was
right about time and
space is the price.
“space”
daturamoon.com 