daylight wakes me up and i turn into the green moth on the windshield.
a few months ago i would have died to be someone with the same kind of pulse
as you. i wanted to know what it felt like to breathe your same
air and listen to the fabrication of your words, your lies like lists of things
you wanted me to hear, essays crafted to the palaces of my mind.
you knew what i wanted because you know the architecture of so many women—
not seeing my poisonous nature, the blisteringly sweet aftertaste that crumples
you into me again, again, again, each hit better than the last. together
we chase the dragon, needing more and more of each other
to understand what it means to be alone.

being alone is different than screaming into the pillows as sunlight peers through
the blinds, a curious onlooker. i never remembered falling asleep but i always remember
how strange the light looked, and my nightmares before i woke up being crushed
beneath your arm. my neck was sore from being jammed into the corner of the bed
by your body. you got as close to me as you possibly could, i guess.
but i didn’t really mind, i could still wake up a few hours later to the feeling of you
pressing in me, orienting me with the dripping sounds of my moans.

i  used to be so sad that i didn’t know what it felt like to not be in physical pain from it.
i only existed, on strings of thought, vomit, pills, lapses of time, stolen,
shame, regret.  my bruises were blue-grey pieces of cut glass, worn around my legs like
some sparkling geodes, crystals and signs of illness. i regarded my
surroundings as a myriad of bathrooms and plastic bags and trash cans and
showers in which i spewed puke at any point in the day, my hands
shaking, knees quivering. i saw my face in the mirror and realised
that i no longer had a life i could call my own.

you will be turned into something i may keep. fluorescent, smoking, the fire goes out
and i am staring at the tantric circles burned into my flesh, made by the way  
your bloodshot eyes roamed. jesus you whispered, atheist hands
tucked in the front pockets of your jeans. thumbs out, some gesture of confidence.
i could have kissed you, all of your names and faces folding and burning
under my lips. i don’t care who you are anymore, i just want one of you
to take care of me, let me be yours. the wicked scent buried in my pillows
reminds me of the idea of you versus the reality of you. whatever the differences are,
i wish to be something like your scent, something you bury in me. i wouldn’t mind
being your grave, your silence. the end to your means.

you can kill me if you want, and bless my meat for your sweet lips,
knowing what to pair me with and how to taste me for the last time, savour,
letting me linger on your tongue where i belong. the pain of knowing what
you are is the warmest part of me. my body is married to the dirt by nightfall,
covered in milky hairs, a touch like ice.  the river is dark and heavy, pulling
in the back of my head with the tide mesmerizing all of this gravity, memorising me.
the moon very well may end up a brittle grey instrument in my throat. the patch of sky
i can barely see between the trees is a lightless cove, every star hidden in your blank stare.
you could weave constellations in the spilling strands of my organs, pointing out the atrocities,
the faults, the stars i’d die by.

there's this notion lodged between nodes and a medula in my head, this concept that you are the lakes and oceans, all the rivers, ponds, oases. you are every body of water, seeping into the soil of me. i hold you, you caress me, coming in waves, soaking me. of you, i am irresolute. sometimes i shiver, shake uncontrollably in the anticipation of you. 

there i am, a small fairy-thing waif-girl in the front of a car, knees jammed into the steering wheel to keep from shaking, still shaking. hands, fingers like small bird wings constantly trembling. i am in flight. 

somehow you return, day after day showing up behind me and placing a hand on my waist. it seems we are together, to people on the street, to the trees, the things that stride in the dark with purpose beside us. but to us, it is less of a togetherness and more of a mutual loneliness. 
we know what we like, what we want, and we slowly and lustfully abuse it in the silence of the night, in the calamity of the day. you tear me free from the strings of stars on my ceiling and i rip you from the timelessness of your being. we are coexisting and as drifters, as lovers, we can't make sense of this. 

i exhale, and the world drops dead. you inhale, and the world festers in our throats. a kiss, tongues ensnared, then smoke and debris. i think we are constantly stoned, at least i am. swallowing, i feel ferns growing in my throat, lilacs brushing down with blades of grass to tickle my heart. i see you fading and have to claim you again. we belong to each other out of unspoken agreements. you're jealous of what i do when you aren't around. of who i do when you aren't around. you tie me to the door of the car and throw my dress over my eyes. i think i am blind, or just finally dead. fucking finally. finally fucking.

the black dog of hope claws against the ugly door of my mind and i find myself dearly wishing for my life to be shorter, over sooner, encapsuled and lost in a finite way, with infinite travel into the burning husk of the earth. turn my corpse to ashes and play. kick me up and breathe me in. roll me up and smoke me. let me grow within you and become you. let me exist, be the air you breathe, the reason to get high and masturbate in the eerie sound of your room, alone. i hope you enjoy it. 
let me climb up the walls of your mind and cloak you in pillow-soft clouds of smoke. there are no stars left in the sky, and for this you are constantly mourning. there's nothing left of us but the bruises on my body, nothing left of us but the blood in me sucked in tender spots to the surface of my skin, terrible purple fish in a white lake, settled above my collarbones.

you are the one, i say in my sleep. but this is only a way to console myself, a temporary comfort, the way i can always puke what i eat when i should have just eaten nothing in the first place. the comfort of vomit is the best oxymoron i know. the comfort of you is also another pretty fucking great one. 

like when you forced me down, watching me cry, scream, tearing me open, my body weakening against you, into me. there was nothing in the world at that moment, it all disappeared in my selfish wailing, my interruptive bawling. your hands lashed around my wrists and held me to your chest as the world shrank so tight it was vibrating fast as a hummingbird heart against my skin. i felt like grit, salt, stains. crying still, i curled in on myself. my cheek pressed into something hard, eyes squinted shut, and i didn't try to disguise my sobs anymore. and you continued, you kept going, you went onward, you, you, you finished.

we lay there in an aftermath of something so cruel that neither of us could really say it happened, or give it a name. our sweat mingled the way light combines and reflects to create colour. your cum lay in lacy filaments and loops along my spine and pressed from me to the soaked seats as you flipped my limp white body over. there was the sound of millions of breathing souls coming back to life as the world expanded again, lifting from my skin like a bad dust. i rolled down the windows and your hands prowled my saline skin, the translucence of me impregnated with salt from you. my lipstick lay in butterfly patterns across your chest. from where i lay, leaning back across the seats, the door, a fogged-up window open behind my head, it looked as if you had a series of mouth-shaped wounds laid upon your body. 
of course i despised you. of course i hated you. i had to.

but i liked you even so. i liked you for doing what you wanted. for being what you wanted. for letting me be what you wanted. for finding in me what you wanted. suddenly, nothing mattered but what you wanted. 
and that was all i wanted. i had nothing left.


a little high, i snuck out of my house. applied lipstick and jumped out of the window. my black ballet flats were soaked in the condensation of the grass and i could feel cold night air through my lace panties. red prada-purfumed curls framed my face. if you read this in a magazine, you'd have turned the page by now. you'd be infatuated for a moment, then look away. i'm made to hold your gaze for five seconds, then disappear. laugh caught in your throat. i burn and you sigh. 

men watch me, elbows propped up on windowsills as they chain-smoke, their wary glances in my direction only slight props to our conversation. i tell them about satirical literature, about birds of prey, about labyrinths and houses made bigger on the inside. they listen, watching my mouth. watching the way i move words, watching the way birds of prey must do. it takes a few more minutes, but i pull on their coatsleeves and finally they know what i mean. i think they finally understand. i love them as much as i could love anything, and i don't really love anything anymore. i lost the concept somewhere around the time i lost you. 
so i tell them, my hands slipping up their sleeves to feel their shoulders, warm skin--i tell them about birdcages, about smoking all alone, about my muscles eating themselves. they watch my body shift in wordless ways. i tell them about silence and solitude. my voice is no longer there, just echoing in their heads as i kiss wounds across their dappled shoulders, biceps. telling them about sadness and self-loathing. i bite their necks and taste their skin. telling of suicide, scars. they hear me and don't hear me.  they hear everything and nothing. they hear what they want. by the end of us, moments or hours or days, weeks, months later, they will stare at the ceiling, still thinking of what i've said, of what i've been to them.

let me live inside of your head for a little longer. i promise you won't regret me.