orangeindigo

(--a treatise on the ownership of my body or how I woke up to my head partially shaved and the blinds partially open and I was at peace) it begins in six parking lots, no, just one, followed by a drive and a rest stop and a short smoke somewhere he cannot see me. I know the taste and the smell of how men are when they are - not good - but I came to believe, I was made to believe that what I get in this life is beyond well deserved. so I let it in, pass over me like two weeks in the spring. and the exit signs are closed to me. and the sky is a bowl of marbles slowly spilling into the horizon. I think I know people - the way that some people

walking home in the early evening when the river overflowed, have you ever been drowning? you and I push and pull like opposing heart chambers as I try to carve myself into the right shape to match your left and changing aspirations. I want to be a life preserver, let you cry into my arms; you bring me water in the morning, perform CPR in the dark. unhealthy? what is health. I am the picture of wellness, if not fitness, flexing my muscles and practicing my patience. want to grow like two trees changing each other in circles, trunks and roots too tangled up to rip them off of one another. want to give you tetanus and

winter park, in the summer, I mean the passing autumn. your face was a disaster, a tornado, tsunami, or something. and I loved you like the antonym, the opposite of an anchor. hot air balloon, a tangent, the rhythm of your footsteps. I was wrong, alright, I lied. it was somewhere in February, in a year that was not mine, I was sixteen or forty. I was lain there on a blanket, which was gifted to my mother, cold bodies like a secret or a seizure just unburied. I had that camouflage backpack and (I swear to god) I wanted your cock inside me. princess, princess. never vomited or pissed on my dress, not any of them. but I needed you to be there,

i. left permanent maxillary canine (11/23)   tunnel opens, no warning. I was waiting for the light, the train bellowing (kidding, kidding). bite my lip, tongue the blood. heat-soaked, dissociative, and diffuse.   watched the plane travel over half a continent, not this continent, but not really, not really. drove too drunk, fucking blinded by my anxieties coming unhung, uptight to down-tight, sleep-bright and well-deprived. no more broadcasts from you, but I don't know that yet, not at this time I am thus describing, thus pre-recorded and imperfectly transcribing.   inject caffeine beneath long fingernails, claw-l

gray and gray-er sides of the moon or your face. as I stretch to hyper-extension, the way I explain every flaw as inexplicable or ingrained, half-handed nervous ticking,  cigarette flicking taught from the fear of ash- staining white bedclothes. don't buy white pillowcases and don't wear  a white wedding dress, no matter what, no matter. here I am, bets hedged and neatly cut, decks of cards - testament to that human imagination (am I right), so many things we can do with fifty-two pieces of cardstock  what is a suicide king, anyway? the dagger is behind his head. tell me lies, tell me. neuroses of love: eat your hair, eat my hair, kiss

snail shells, a little nickel in the dryer for half a year now, maybe only a third - storm waning not waxing thank god I bought an apartment that never faces the moon. balcony opens like a scar, so I can listen to the cars. exhales greater than yours. exhaust and exhausted - I have this dream about your greatest fears and I find your high school diploma in a box in my father's attic, laughing laughing; I open my bank statement at the beginning of January and find your fingerprints photocopied, not once but twice. and an old picture from two thousand and seven (or had it been eight?) before I knew about love and spite, two- headed, maybe, or

roses, roses.  you are the shadows of clouds, always moving. the water cycle - desperate swallows and hot piss. no more body mapping like the second page of a coroner's report. heavy pen shading across male/ /female divide anatomical figures. what is written on my body overrides the cataloguing of death - made to be there by a timelessness, you and I like the intersection of trains, one always waiting for the other to pass. dream sequence - I am driving the car; you are sitting in the car. we see or smell freshly sheared metal, woman screams, I reach into cavernous flame-ravaged minivan corpse to pull out booster seat, half-melted to m

thought about anticipation, making art from my long-bones, getting a motorized wheel- chair and letting you name it after one of those characters from that tv show, you know the one. thought about maybe wearing a mermaid tail all the time, like that year when I was convinced I used to be a mermaid and someone I loved sawed me in half and dove into a dermatologist's dumpster to harvest second-hand skin for me, for me. but oceans and salt burn my sinuses, so maybe I was a lumpy freshwater dolphin and you were the woman I impregnated but I never loved you and your milk, tears, were Amazonian fishes.