when i was your age we did not have telephones that fit into our pockets, we talked to one another and looked at our friends faces when we spoke and saw how our words rattled around in their heads and came back out in differing tones and pitch and in turn we were rattled into laughing or crying or into incredible acts of violence or love until someone spoke again.

it is easier to come in from the cold than to go into it. simple, like water quenching thirst. a crisp breeze that cuts through you slowly, a saw blade without sound. i would hammer this into its place if i knew where the nails were.

through the spine like a mallet that rips into dreaming a shattering of the bones clear through and i watch you disassemble into your withered parts a strand of hair here a lip there your hips swaying onto the ground and a thud that rocks me into waking into a pale white room with stained walls and the day clear like the window to an execution.

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