UPDATE

I constructed entirely new eyes while you were gone
A new heart

Each chamber beautiful and perfect
And not yours.

And now you presume To consult on my work?
You’re unqualified,

And unlike those other places you go to escape,
Here, that matters

TORTILLAS

I want to write about fucking you while making tortillas and they can read it but they won’t know what it is to be me.

To smell hot iron and corn and to feel you deep inside my heart and my brain, bracing my hand on the stove while the world explodes and explodes.

THE END

There’s no cleansing rain in this one.
It doesn’t come down and wash the people of their sins
There’s no brand new day, and it doesn’t dawn.
I walked away. And I never came back.
You slipped off, locked inside.
Strings of fate that can’t be uncut

LOVE

How do I wash your fingerprints off my filthy, aching skin?

All the places you touched my feral animal body feel loved and it’s dangerous.

These pinpoints of light flowing out into the dark are going to mark me.

And when you leave, they’ll tear me apart.

VULNERABLE

I was born belly up
Peeled from your sick body Like an overripe avocado pit
You were ashamed of my infant vulnerability

Enraged, you mistook it for weakness.
This soft place you stabbed me in
And sank into, and begged for forgiveness

Is mine, not yours.

TOKEN

I’ve always been here
In plain sight
Withering away.

“You don’t look sick”

Wipe away the struggle
That built the strength
You admire so much

I starve on this pedestal

BORN LIAR

How many years
Did I think that
All I had was charm?

A born liar,

Someone desperate,
Who twists their words.
When it was you all along.

You who built this scaffolding,
You who trained my tongue
Never tell, you said.

Never tell the truth.

CAMPFIRE

You stood too long around the fire in my heart
Never pulling up a chair

Bringing the smallest twigs and branches
Just because you never tried to put us out

Doesn’t mean you loved the glow