remember i will search for you everywhere

your dead father's truck;
i can't miss you if i'm gone,
if you were not here.

i crawl back into the womb,
dripping spit and licking my wounds.
this is no way to grow,
rising from the earth like a sapling.

i spill like cough drops,
like a sermon, out onto the mossy ground
and into the world --

i feel your energy
like a lung collapse and carry it
in my chest like tuberculosis.
i miss being vulnerable.

love harvests your organs
and forces you to start anew.

she bares her teeth
and snarls at me through the fog,
thick and unnerving, sick and diseased,
cocooning me in grime.

i suppress the pity filling my gut;
i treat it like a newborn, like livestock,
like slaughter. i admire the way
her ribs protrude as she exhales.

she taunts me with love notes,
stained carpets, a mess of pink plastic
that presses me into the pavement
and returns me to childhood.

i cover my body in bandaids.
suddenly i'm ten and something is
chasing me.

my blood rises to the surface,
basks in her presence, makes me
dizzy in its hubris.

i think of her one last time
and how she was too soft;
too soft and yet brittle and harsh and alarming.
i think of her body, her blackened fingernails
and her open wounds.

i hate her for what she did to me
and i love her for what she prevented.

you stand, all slack-jawed,
pressing down on my cavities like a gas mask.
i am sick, frail and withered, heaving
and choking up mothballs.
i can feel this illness in all of my orifices;
you are displaying decay in real time.

my evil leaks out
and drips onto your jeans.

i bound broken bones together in silence
as to not disturb her sleeping,
crunching adderall between my teeth
and swallowing the paste with apple juice.

i have been supporting this weight all my life;
she melts into me like she's partly at fault.

i bleed and she bleeds with me
like it’s voluntary. she never cried, just dug
her nails into the palms of my hands
and bore the weight.

there is nothing i can do to fix this,
nothing that isn't disgusting and fatal.

i trace your veins with fragile fingers,
stopping where they split and kissing the skin.
i pay extra attention to your pericardial cavity
and breathe in the scent.

i imagine myself nestled in your organs,
flush against your trembling heart and your ribcage.
i assure you that i won't bite, not with my words
but the rhythm of my breathing.

i swear that i'm gentle, i swear my skin is thin
and i swear i'm being honest.

if i had the chance,
i would tell her how it took me years
to get used to another pair of blue eyes.
i would tell her i see her face
everywhere.

she is harrowed, cut open with glass,
insulation spilling out of her guts just like her
basement walls. i can see myself now,
standing in front of her,
skin glistening like vaseline.

the rot collects under my fingernails;
the smell clings to everything in the room.
i feel my body warping in two different directions,
not knowing the difference between a variable
and weaponized incontinence.

i speak so quietly she can barely hear,
“see? i can be soft too, i swear i can be soft too!"

i promised you i wouldn't do this,
but i did.

i wait through crying.
i wait idly, as your knees kiss my carpet
ever so softly. i wait for the deafening sound
of your hands against my ears to
stop the ringing.

everything goes silent again.

through all of this, my ghost remains sanguine;
he watches my carcass with longing.

i'm twisting through this harshness
in all my bare-brained glory. i’m throbbing
on this curb; i know you probably think
i am dying on this hill.

you’ve set everything into motion.
it spreads like an outbreak; you can find love
in even the most disgusting places.
the sound fractures like light, a splintering,
a prism of ignorance.

you press your body up against my lips
and i press back harder.

it’s a sad morning, but only i know it.
i bleed under the morning light and nobody
notices. i look for cigarettes
and realize we smoked them all.

the bodies in this place are still.
i rouse myself from the couch and look at
the people passed out on the other side of it,
on the floor, in the kitchen.

i try to remember what their names were
and i can’t. i think of how i want to take a picture.
the carpet sways, our legs suffocating,
i feel my pupils return to normal.

my shirt clings to my back;
the stench of 23 years lingers on me
like a disease.

i wake with my head on the floor,
but this time it's my own. she asks me
if she was too loud getting dressed. i lie.
i'm just thinking about the muscles of her back,
the worry-lines, her nicotine habit.

she is unrecognizable now, but it's my fault;
her skin is callused and bleeding in all of the places
my teeth broke through.