when i was your age, i drank the spit of homeless men because we ran out of liquor and we pissed out of car windows screaming for quick and dirty love that could last a lifetime. when i was your age there was no tomorrow only the restless exhaustion of the sun beating us into sleep. when i was your age i was full of madness and desire but did not believe in any future.

he stands aside. i push him aside. he grabs at me, i knock him down. up the stairs he chases after me, i kick in the face. i trip, hang onto the banister, he grabs hold my hair. we tumble and tumble and tumble and along the way there is a soft crack, the popping of knuckles. by the time we hit bottom, his tongue hangs out of his mouth and his head lolls from side to side. i breathing, i slowly stand up. i kick him before going back up the stairs.

the ebb and flow of the poison in me leaking out in drips and droves, a blood gush, a scrape, a tide of pain along bitter sand, abandoned and raped, over and over, submerged, drowned then left for dead. the poison in me, genetic marker, unmistakable, distinguished, a tattoo on the neck for all to see and find vile.

nights to jazz like this going bat shit over the change in the weather when my ankles still feel the chill so i suffocate my feet in socks grimy and well worn but the toes don’t yet stick out like sore thumbs and i would i swear i would dance out in the middle of the porch if my nipples turn so hard and threaten to pop off like sour grapes

and right after she says, i’m thinking of her, are you thinking of her and i said, i never think of her at all, and she frowns in the dark ad stiffens against me, i don’t believe you, i don’t believe you, and i try to smell her, i try to bring her back to me, and i feel her leave me in the dark even if she doesn’t move, i feel her leaving and i want to try to convince her but i can’t, i’ve told all that i have to say, all of it and i cannot bear to repeat any of it again

breaking broken i take all pleasure from this from my pain from the act of bleeding i am alive i break the skin and there release something i’ve seen before something i need to see again there me in the mirror whole and unblemished maybe a child maybe an angel unsoiled and free of all my mistakes all free of the haunting the weight of these years that have thickened the skin to cut through all that all my bullshit cut through the caked over and hardened lies and scars cut open the skin over and over again until i finally feel the need to heal

i dream and spit and howl until i can no longer dream but the bugs come out from under the chin, explode across my mouth and she asks me if i’m doing it all over again and i say no and she fingers the catepillars across my eyes and makes me swear i’m not lying and i tremble with rage because i deserve far worse than this, this doesn’t come even close enough