her

i find it funny

how much you would hate the person i've become.

cut off a layer of old, soft skin, a hydra of flowers sprouts

from the corpse, and your horrified eyes in a million dreams

that are just dreams.

why does that haunt me?

why can i still remember the flavor of my own brain fluid 

the day you broke my skull by the exit sign.

green light, as gentle as a hand on the back of my neck.

she says it sounds vague?

that's because it's supposed to.

i wrote the real version

on the back of a receipt in los angeles.

and i lost it

on purpose.

that's the problem with us.

we think we have the right to everybody's truth, everybody's inner parts, because

we're so used to spilling our own like cheap prostitutes

paying somebody else to spend the night with our fears and our doubts

and our demons

because we hate to be alone.

but i've been alone.

maybe it wasn't good for man

but woman was determined to correct today

what would kill somebody else's happiness tomorrow.

i'm back in my old house with a fever now, thinking about days that have been long dead.

but memories don't die.

and i keep mine, both to torture and to teach,

elusive emotion between the cracks.

i find it funny, after all,

how much you would hate the person i've become.

i aggravate the wound now, cold hands on a back that's never gone outside,

a tourniquet that is too tight,

and every day, i've had to learn love all over again

like i woke up from a coma 

and forgot my own name.

after all this time, he smiles, edge of his eyes set hard like the lines around our mouths

and a hydra of emotion wells up inside of me. because i'm not too old

to change.

i love this girl.

because each death has been the genesis of somebody new.

bless her, Father.

she walks on fire sometimes. 

and i find it funny.

because you wouldn't like her.

only now

nobody would care.

x