I carry corpses with me everywhere I go
Decaying flesh leeching toxins into my body
My small brown broken body
Dirty delusions leading 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 again
Occasionally the prison door slides open
and a tiny tray is shoved into my cell
Nourishment

Light enters the wound and it is excruciating
Blinding my eyes
Irritating my injuries
Amputating the attachment with no anesthesia
Limitless possibilities yet only one harsh reality
Unescaped woe burrowed into the marrow of my bones
Borne of the mothers that made me
Butterflies flutter around a grey cement boat
Swimming along
Shadows are discovered as sunbeams travel from the skies to the dirt
Bridging 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 leeching into my skin
Infecting my kin
Even if they didn’t do that 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 my breath
Quickly, before I change my mind
A final cry
Innocent exorcisms thorough and far-reaching
Across time and memory
It is decided
I snap the cold metal chain around my chin
I drop the dead down in their graves
And come up for air empty-handed
Unfaithful to the pain
A precious old friend that I must love from afar
Decaying
Churning
Spiraling
Blooming wild-crafted raining fertility