You spit the seed carelessly
Not expecting it to root
Now untamed grief climbs my spine
And I am wrecked with fruit

No scarecrow could deter
Those who would eat their fill
My dreams, unwatered houseplants,
Line the window sill

The leaf, a rodent scratching across
Pitch-dark roadway

October skies, a week of rain
The river’s muddy face spills
Shamed secrets to the skeletons
Tucked away in basement closets

This weather gets inside a person
My mouth grey and chilling
Breathing its sickness
On the faces of passersby

Love is not the savior you hoped for
when, childlike, the fear of night clung to your skin

it's since been cast off for more grown up terrors,
the wound in your chest that eats you alive
and you think you might as well let it
because no one could ever love a thing like you

oh -- you'd die for it, for a heart handed over ( Read more... )

the fiercest monsters do not crouch, pounce-ready ( Read more... )

I made myself in paradise

dripping clean with primordial waters
when I heard the dust crying out for my breath

to stir the ash of past hurts
that it may cling to new flesh

by want we become

the pang that foretastes pleasure
the suffering that prophecies relief

so savor the bitter fruit ( Read more... )

tonight I am five years old ( Read more... )

this is the aftermath, isn't it ( Read more... )

there's a particular silence in living alone ( Read more... )

without you is a new house
that's a far cry from familiar

whispers of the settling into night are
a distant tongue, the mind overturning,  
feeling lost in the midst of foreign walls
and roads and busy faces, desperate
for anything known or comforting and kind

instead the ears and nerves and heart
lie sleepless, on edge, all buzzing with
will ( Read more... )

we make such a pair ( Read more... )