bones

i can hear the wind knocking your insides around. it can be a lonely sound, the jostling of your bones against one another, clacking into the debris filled sky like wood. no wonder we feel so close to trees; some have begun putting their ashes with the seeds in the hope of living twice, maybe even longer this time around. the douglas firs fear the holidays: in the winter i burn my bones, embers catch in the corners and smoke fills the room, removes the oxygen

exorcism

my brother has a demon under his skin. carries it around in the hollow nooks of his head, lets him fill the gaps, swallowing the silence that would otherwise keep him sane. he keeps it tucked away with long white pills, i call them his caterpillars. they bloom butterflies in his stomach and their soft wings push it into hiding. it can't stand the colors. he can hear it in the distance; demands echoing off thought, intelligible. sometimes i can hear the demon breathing when i sleep, when i open my eyes i see my brother's silhouette against the wall, chest rising and falling heavy. his desire to kill is not his own, and neither is his body, possibly his soul.

i want your skin/self-loathing

i.
mine is scarred and diseased, fleas find home in the crevices, drink my blood like wine and ride my stretchmarks like a river. i can see them in their tiny rafts with their tiny wineglasses living only because i'm living; i'd like to kill them at the source. around my ankles it's warfare; they leave land mines that turn into boils, scars. when i'm lying down i'm free game, most of the time they struggle climbing my thighs.


ii.
i can't tell the difference between herpes and flea bites sometimes. the doctor told me they were flea bites but the scrape came back positive. i try to scrub them off but they just bleed, flaking off when they want to; sometimes days, sometimes weeks. it wouldn't be too bad if people didn't treat me like a leper, it only hurt the first time, like sex is supposed to.

iii.
skin falls off at all angles leaving a paper trail when i don't want people to know where i have been. i tear up mirrors for fun, use the edges to peel off the itching layers. even my skin hates itself-- builds a new unsatisfactory layer before the last one is dead. it's equivalent to pushing it out a window.

selfish

she took out her teeth. replaced them with rocks. gnashed them against one another to watch the sparks fly in the mirror. she kissed her brother, one fell into his palm and he rolled it around on his fingertips. he put it in his pocket. the blood in her mouth was ignored, it tasted like cotton candy, reminded her of going to the amusement park and walking through the haunted house with her first girlfriend.

her teeth were kept in a mason jar above her bed. from time to time she would hold them in her two palms and lick them to remember what her mouth once tasted like. oil, metal, vinegar and death, she decided. she kept them up there for safe keeping and to scare the kids away. the only problem with all of this was that she stopped smiling to keep her new teeth in. every happy moment was given to someone else and pocketed for safe keeping.

one miserable day, she sat in the darkness of her room to keep herself from smiling, to keep her teeth to herself. she was looking at a book about violins and chuckled, inhaled a black rock that had been jagged over time from the gnashing. She choked: trying to spit it up only cause it to rip apart her esophagus, an unfamiliar blood trickled up her throat, dark and tasting of rat poison. when they found her body it was covered in dead rats that had eaten away at her skin. it was considered a suicide.

avoidant

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