I Want to Be Ugly

I feel more and more feral.

I want a different word. Unhinged.

I want to be ugly. I want to be a mess—show my ass.

Bit by bit, I’m letting loose again. Saying more. Saying less. Using my face and body to communicate.

It is noticeable.

I want them to see my wholeness. I won’t shy away.

I play with myself, my thoughts, my perceptions. I challenge. I rebel.

I believe in letting the darkness play out. Something is ready this era. I have wants. I’m human too. And I’m a generous woman.

I want to be afraid and safe.

I’ve been questioning reality and mortality. Getting nowhere close to anything that soothes and makes sense.

I am struggling to surrender to the care I feel.

I’m realizing I move similarly to my dad

In and out.

How I refuse to acknowledge that others are attached to me and that they are a person. How I’ve lost some humanness through the cracks of me.

Emotionally, I intellectualize my emotions and others’. I feel deeply, but I’m not connected to my feelings fully. I float above, observing.

Solitude protected me from rejection.

Solitude protected me from the noise of the world.

Solitude protected my journey to myself.

I ended up alone while becoming everything.
I am questioning everything about relationships.
I see what part of me must die.
A big chunk of my identity.

How pathetic. How humbling these human feelings.

I bite my tongue. Resentment fills my mouth as acid.

Behind the barricades
The grip on surrender

I found my sun
By my bedside
On a river
It didn’t take me
Where I’m going
Oh, the faces
I meet

A piece of her
Crawled from her insides
When they were all fresh and overdue
When nobody wanted her
She couldn’t keep herself

I’ve been delving into a new territory with my art.

Bit by bit, I’m letting loose again.

She Will Return

You’ve inflicted a wound
down the length of her spine.
Sabotaging the currents
to maintain her movements
give way to the wind.

With the immense distance it provides,
she will carry on.
Her skin sticks and glows a little,
glistens in the sunlight.

She’ll return
and destroy all that you are,
leaving behind
trails of ash and stains

I Turn Void

Gasping for your air
I turn void
I cave in
Absorbed by your flesh
Seeking words of salvation
a cure to the spell
Fatal devotion
I’ll rage without it
Won’t care about anything else

The Ground Still Loved Me

I’ve been crying hard.
It’s what I do best.
The ground is loved on by the seeds of clouds.

But I’m fragile,
and I soften in explosion.
When I experience grief,
I face it suddenly.
There is no space

— from Repetitions of Ruin 
(incantations from the same wound)

I Try To Unwrite It

Sometimes I reread the poems I wrote for past lovers and feel like… this was too good for them. I try to take it back

Too tender. Too raw. Too sacred.

Bitterness shows up first.

Memory comes next. 

With it the soft ache of truth.

I remember why I wrote it, the little universe we lived in for a while. 

And I remember.

I remember it was theirs. Because a version of me meant it.

Even if they didn’t deserve the whole poem forever.

Some things are real just because they happened.

And some people get lucky enough to be written about.

The love was real, so was the poem.

So I give it back.

Ripe and Mean

When we went without
I forgot my name
Things were not good
We’d be ripe and mean
We’d beg and fight
Skin splitting
Play tug of war with our faces
Growl through negative space
I am awake
I am awake
I am awake
I plead
insanity
I give
him control
Still
painting him in contrast