changeling

you don't know

she would soon be resigned by gravity
the weight of small paint handprints
pressed and smeared across her skin

like hexes
of domesticity.

she lay in bed now, eighteen
thinking of this future
wondering how many little treasures she could leave for herself
while she was being pulled down this shaft
rope wrapped tightly
around her waist, her hips, her ovaries

steadily grinding wheel

to capital LoveCareerResponsibility

she rolled her eyes
and sighed

___


___

cut it outtt!

I watched it, coming
but it still hit me so fast
right in the mouth

I heard the light slap
of blood hitting the wall
and when I could make out shapes again

I stared at it
dripping down

and rubbed my face in it
and my body
and was so sick
and it was everywhere

and it was something
that I could coat myself with

nothing else
seemed to want
to have anything to do with my skin

so I'll take it

___


___

a poem for alex, or for Anyone

I am holding your hand

More importantly,
most importantly,

you are holding my hand

we are staring at the ground
waiting for it to bubble up
spit and slide apart

burst open like a shell
like the shell we've always hoped it was

and we can dive away from the feeling of worms
(feelings of worms)

and pour ourselves into it.

It will be like a strainer

and our clothes, and bumps, and homeworks, and
sorries, and every tongue that made us feel sick,
and every day of standing still, and our Hers,
and our bottom teeths, and and

can all be left sitting on the upside

beneath it, naked of all those crushing breaths

we will wind and flip through the veins
stretching our very own contrails
as far as we ever thought we could

and it will be a burning of More:
like thirsty flares

we will twirl and speed so fast
that I will look over at you
and all I will be able to make out
from the color and the rush

is a smile, hooking so far wide
I'd only seen demo'd before
in tickle fights

oh these canals will be so vast
to screech and flow through like air & our
reaching lungs

a pillow for the brows
to finally relax on to

a space
for us
all of us