I carry corpses with me everywhere I go
Decaying flesh leeching toxins into my body

My small brown broken body

Dirty delusions lead me to my death
Lovers pour poison into my back
Unknowingly,
Sometimes knowingly

I drag their dead bodies along with me
Unwilling to let go
The love is too strong
I love them too much
The anger binds me
Senseless desperation
Bottomless scarcity
I can’t give it up
Hallowed out memories

Keeping them alive as worms crawl thru their every orifice
Succumbing to my haunted necromancy
Clinging to the comfort of not-quite-outgrown identity

I walk by habit dressed as devotion

What could have been
An abandoned woman with crucified dreams
Adjusting her crown
Shuffling along, step by step

Slow-step by slow-step

Dragging along the many miracles of misfortune

A layer of bile and mucus and dust
Settles to protect me
Keeping harm at arm’s length
Never to touch me close again

Occasionally the prison door slides open
and a tiny tray is shoved into my cell

Light enters the wound and it is excruciating
Blinding my eyes
Irritating my injuries
Amputating the attachment with no anesthesia

Limitless possibilities yet living in one harsh reality
Unescaped woe burrowed into the marrow of my bones
Born of the mothers that made me

Butterflies flutter around a grey cement boat
Swimming along discovering shadows
As sunbeams travel from the skies to the dirt
Bridging the heavens and the worlds under

Shivering sweating shedding bodies
Huddle in the corner seeking warmth
Can we purify the sins we summoned together?

Fractured egos have no choice but to kneel
Gracious for a drop of dark honey
Broken hearts let love in best

You can’t detox if you don’t let go

Humble all-receiving
Angry and aware
Love is alchemizing the venom to keep it from seeping into my skin

Infecting my kin

Even if they didn’t do the same for me

Only when you have starved do you see
How juicy a lil apple can be

When you allow the past to die you realize
What it really means to rest in peace

Ashes blowing souls dancing
Hurtling through space
Swelling shattering continuing on their way
Mighty galaxies surrender under gravity’s pull

In the space between who I am and who I might be
I make a clean incision with a sterile blade
Sharpened by quiet faith
Quickly before I change my mind

A final cry
Innocent exorcism thorough and far-reaching
Across time and memory

I snap the cold metal chain around my chin
I drop the dead bodies down in their graves
I come up for air empty-handed

Unfaithful to the pain
And shame and blame
A fake old friend that I must love from afar

Churning

Spiraling

Blooming wild-crafted raining fertility