i.boy feeds on light — a hasty poem i wrote last night for a bps prompt.

dig what’s hollow out of me, past skin that ripens & is unceremoniously peeled away. something or someone reminding me i have a voice. that i have a voice and it reverberates like a backhanded slap. the opposite of which is silence. a silence that prickles hotly at my eyelids. heavy & rolled back. the skull exposed. ribcage a box of fried cables. a green-red glow in evenings. the hand that feeds you, and starves you in the same breath. the fingers bent backwards & acrobat-like. thin and undeserving. the mouth pulled into a taut line. a telephone wire, birdless & humming. craving touch, like the tip of a wing. the horizon upon which, these bone-tired mornings are fleeting. a sudden shock of white, & maybe you’d like me better like that. my body turned inside out. my body in the distance. my body a suggestion of light. and the light is plenty here, gutted & left brutally maimed, its spine crushed & heels chafed. its resolve skinned alive.

a human shield

split-lip autumn. i’m only ever half-awake but i never sleep. my eyelids an afterthought, turned translucent as a prayer made in an empty room. gardenias sprout from the backs of my knees, the sky stretches bone-like & skeletal. i spend all of august with someone else’s skin stuck in between my teeth. october is the silence that follows. pronounced, more felt than seen. like those neighborhood kids with their faces like jack-o-lanterns. the dead bird i found on my front porch on tuesday. i miss michigan and its odd weather. the stars outranked. the wounded light. the shallow cut in my forearm. the way it felt [like a primal rage] like my faulty sternum plugged out of its socket. a pulmonary blackout. because i said ‘i want you to love me,’ and you said ‘no, not today’ [&—the damage was formidable]. a linear regression. the heart an animal bleeding out on its side. the spine reshaped; used as an ore. & i could drain every lake we ever swam in as kids & i could reach out to touch you as long as there’s stained glass in between us (a church in between us). & i could throw my body in front or your body & still i couldn’t get you to want me.

October 18th,

I cannot love without violence. My hands are bound behind my back and the air is thin where my wrist meets yours—like fog hanging over a grim florida sky. And the hanging is the easiest part. By which I mean, I saw my reflection at the butcher shop, and I thought about how I must be ruining us both. I must be ruining us both. By which I mean, I am a bloodletting. Rendered red & bad meat. And It’s not an exaggeration when I say this feels like fucking stigmata. This feels like a crucifixion. My head lowered and the exposed air spitting salt into the cut. And God, I’ve been thinking a lot about my ex, lately. We used to curl up on my ex boyfriend’s grandmother’s spare sofa with her mangy little cat between us. He was functionally deaf and had three legs. And she would sit us down on that god awful floral-print sofa and pour us ginger tea. She’d tell us about how his previous owners had given him a funny name, one that meant prince in Urdu or something. My ex boyfriend didn’t like cats. He didn’t like cats but he always made sure the cat was fed, anyway. And I thought that was why I loved him. I loved his small kindnesses, the way his jawline felt underneath my fingers, how he always wore his shirt collars up, but mostly because I thought he had beautiful eyes. And I thought, maybe if I could have something beautiful love me, I could diffuse all this negative space. And I wanted to be beautiful, too. But I stayed empty, and the sky grew errant and half-demolished by the setting sun, and I still phone his grandmother sometimes. And I’m sorry for the hurt I’ve caused you. It must sting like a bitch, I know. You deserve better than a slit throat and a machine gun and knuckles that throw themselves against your door at 3 am begging to be let in. You deserve the moon, and all of its phases, too. A gibbous throat and crescents sitting in your lungs and a full heart. Rabid with light. Maybe I will never learn to be anything other than concave. A skinned husk with all of its innards cleaved whole in a butcher shop window. And how I look at my ex now and think: fuck you, I did this for me. And this morning, I was at the 7-11 down the road and I was talking to the cashier, and I told her about my empty, and she said that she was the same kind of empty as me. And I bought six packets of spearmint chewing gum.

auspicious day. and i have touched the light that clings to your shoulder, like a moth against a glass window. once again, i sleep without the peace that comes with sleep. i am slack-jawed & tired. the sky abovehead is stagnant. a hot glass of milk left on the table. a light left on in your childhood bedroom. the ceiling with the peeling plaster, and the fan that stares at u all day. you long to be something other than concave. an emancipated limb. a frail shadow. you are retched with longing. heaving into the sink, white fingertips sprawled out. your loneliness is a gas leak. it spills & spills & spills from you. you watch starry-eyed lovers on the train back home. you want the bone and the marrow of it, too. your emptiness pulled out of bed & shot down in broad daylight. you want hands that warm yours when it’s cold out. u rediscover fire. starved touch. a glow that stirs half-awake and kisses you back.

after the rain

slow, pent up morning. hot milk warming my tongue. a crow flickers in and out of sight. my neighbor’s dog whines. somewhere, the world is ending, by which i mean, it’s storming in Oklahoma right now. and have you heard the news, the terrible news? are you prepared for what might follow? do you still hold your breath under your tongue like a concealed weapon? i wish to be druid-like & never there, the empty space in between fingertips. i wish to be small-boned & noiseless & like the static in the air before it rains. before it rains and rains and rains and our ribs are flooding with it. i read somewhere that hyenas are not cruel, simply misunderstood. and that the lion king lied. i think we’re too quick to jump to conclusions. i think we’re afraid of things we deem ugly because we’re afraid to See ourselves for what we really are. rotten & quick to bleed. the sky’s blue-grey and it reminds me of the summer we caught mudbugs at the lake & j’s eyes. stillwater-like. reeling. i’m going to fall asleep on the kitchen table. my hands too fragile to hold. there must’ve been a black bird in my window, but the world moves it out of sight.

i’ll learn to be small. i’ll learn to be quiet. i’ll stop asking things of the world, i promise. i’ll be the husk of a moth on a dust-rimmed wooden tile. i’ll be the flickering kitchen light. i’ll split the universe open down the middle & carve an X into its chest & when it says “ouch, that hurt” and curls up on its side i’ll walk away from the murder. i’ll stop asking for things i can’t have, i promise. i won’t demand anything of the sky or its trembling knees. i’ll bite down on my tongue; swallow it whole. i’ll be an apparition in the mirror. i’ll be a late october chill. i will close my fist so tight the white of my knuckles will be all that remains of me. i’ll be Nowhere. a childhood bedroom forgotten. all my 22 years of growth or a crucial lack there of. i’ll be a primal regression, a sad inching back. i’ll delete every poem i ever Wrote about you i’ll be Covert. i’ll be two fingers crossed behind your back i’ll be Liquid sunlight. on warm waters. i’ll be a child gone missing i’ll be listening to ‘nobody’ by mitski on repeat for 4 days. i’ll be blue. a picture of a moon in a storybook. bent nose, soft eyelids. see, i’d very well like to be Nonexistent. the bee that bit into sweet skin and died instantly. the mouth never meant for speaking; the teeth rotten and skeletal. the body that sits down in the middle of the road and patiently awaits being run over. the thin, frail light. the pulled curtain. a body that is not a body so much as a silhouette of one in white chalk. caution tape & police sirens. i won’t Write about you. i won’t write. i’ll keep the words in my throat until they make me sick. i’ll hold back. i’ll say, here, you can have all of me. or none of me. i throw an ultimatum like a knife that never lands its target. i become a lake. i become a dried leaf in autumn. i have nothing. Left to Give anymore. nothing makes any sense. i’ll just close my eyes. i’ll run screaming into the woods. i’ll be an incomplete thought. i’ll wake up and i’ll take it back. i’ll take it all back. the hurt and the spit and the body bag. i’ll listen to my ribs hum. and nothing. not even the stars with their eyes rolled back into their heads–will be the same.