my heart is selfish
and only wants me
She’s abusive,
intrusive.
She swallows me hidden.
I’m in love with her
I trust her
She forces me,
shoves truth
out from my belly
through my clenched teeth
She makes me throw up,
nice and neat.
She edges me to moonstone tears
Even I am sick of me
and my selfish heart
She allows me to fold
as she soaks into my Viking thighs
I wouldn’t still be alive
without her
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.
Nest of Sorrow
I just sit in my nest.
And wail and cry and sob.
I’m fragile and I delight in explosion.
At the edge of grief
I’m swallowed by it whole.
— from Repetitions of Ruin
(incantations from the same wound)
Truly
Bug On A Wall
“Bug on a wall, doe eyed, pressed to a window, steamed and well, comfortable..
I handled the last storm.
I’ve been meeting people who look like me again. I must admit I’m timid and shy to approach..”
Funny
Laughing hyenas have misunderstandings and particular landings
As the way that I move
It’s too smooth you say
Much too runny
Masked in funny
An instrument for disaster
Their hidden laughter
Wades
Through the Carnivora
Beyond the many wishes
So I beg to land in forgiveness
To set in stone my sins to flesh and
Move from what’s told to win again
Possessive Eclipse
What will linger when I’m gone
If time erases everything
Are some things meant to stay
I wanna leave an imprint
You’d try to forget me
But where will you ever find a ghost as haunting?
Stitched beneath your skin
A whisper in the bones
Haunting
Smokey listeners
Reaching for the shallow limbs of black
They sink and wail to discover life
And so I remain, printed and somewhat flaky
Together, forested in fictions
I lie to myself when I stretch out of the hopeful comforts
I’m picked as bark
The dog days are quite holy; haunting
The body was muddy and dug out of void
Being, holy as well
Peer through
Identify me, then leave me to be, leave me alone
As I grow feral to the moans of cicadasÂ
I will touch the golden skies in faith
The ones I indulge in and tell stories about
Black Sheep
I can go anywhere and find home on my skin
Resting in dew
What’s new
When strangers are blue
Sketched and watercolored onto blocks
I’m an iridescent rock with moss
I wrap my locs when I’m around em
Pretend I’m Medusa, not a bit hesitant
And my shadows vow to move exactly how I move
As I pretend to blend in as if I belonged here
I dodge small talk
I know real voices, true hearts
I’ve mastered how to mirror; starting over less foreign than I
I knew I was alright
I was a locust bite, bitter
In the cool hybrid air
I made my way through the stolen
What I gave away could never keep up
My gift was melted and sculpted
Sometimes I’d call it love
Lifted
Hovering by my bedside
With some lips that tucked me in
Nothing special to keep us up all night
We made sure when we’re together we’re lifted
Freegrandmaa 