I loved soaking in your light.

I’d bask in it’s yellow glow.

But then I turned;

my ears at attention

and eyes no longer

fawn-hearted

the light became a prelude-

Screeching;

rubber on pavement.

I could only watch

My shadow illuminated on the tarmac

not by a sun

but captured

stone-still

by headlights....

August comes, and the wound passes.

Slow.

Thick and bitter, I choke it back.

I choke, I choke, I choke.

It suffocates;

I watch it settle.

Mesmerized, I watch you leave.

Tire tracks in the driveway

your coat still hangs on my door.

Ink on pages, I stain my fingers.

Scarlet on my hands

a book, discarded.

Cassiopeia, Ursa Major, Canis Minor.

Constellations the only witness

of my decay...

I am my father’s best soldier

and my mother’s most rotten daughter

Or;

I am my mother’s most righteous rage

and my father’s worst fear

A woman raised in carnage

to bring ruin

This house is not noble

and I will make it crumble

anyway.

I am no saint.

I am no martyr.

I am afraid.

I am my father’s best soldier

And I am my mother’s most righteous rage

I was not born for this;

And I will...

I’m sitting in this car

burning eyes tracking

The skinny girls

with their shiny legs

and shinier smiles

I stare

with eyebrows messier

than the blood pooling

beneath the skin of my knees

purple, yellow, green

hanging onto their conversations

by the skin of my teeth

They let me in

a door cracked open

Just far enough that my form

misshapen and awkward

can get through

They let me talk;

Trotting ...

I found a dog skull

in the woods

It was the skull of a dog

not some coyote or wolf or fox—

this i’m certain of.

It had man’s touch pressed into

it’s shortened snout

and loyalty smoothed

into it’s rounder shape

I wondered about the dog it was

before it was just a skull in the woods

before teeth marks made their jagged tattoos

in the crest of eye sockets

I stared at it’s moss-covered form

cente...

It is easy to get lost in the underworld.

These words

inscribed on the gates

the entrance to a garden that wants me

to stay

a labrynth

i’ve heard it called

the people I pass look stranger and stranger

don’t turn back.

don’t turn back.

the underworld is not so underworldy

it feels like—

don’t turn back.

don’t turn back.

she calls for me

i need to find her

they told me to go

they ...