The demon clutches in the belly like a claw that screws as well as grabs. It hurts better that way in the deepest way. The darkest way. Wa

I stood at the edge of the reflecting pool With water cascading, lush and cool I jumped into that pool of sun And sank simply down with lungs That filled easily and felt freely To live and breathe each day brimming In that reflecting pool When God reflects, I thought, it might be something Fresh like this with cold gulps of water between billowing breaths I sat and thought that I’d lived for a day Until I realized that I was in shades of grey Like concrete smacks! But blue at

I want to be the needle in your thigh plowing endlessly the field of your discomfort like a splintery thing. Extract the venom to your groin, belly up writhing. I’m like poison groping through the artery. White knuckle the blade. Sweet savoring. Could I prick the vein and string it up like a harp string? I’m plucking away at you, plucking away at you. Don’t you think for the moment that I have the twist on you? I turn you up, under, down, and through for you to chew the

I wish that you’d listened to the call of leaves and the purring in trees, but you got distracted, turned away (as they do), and left me astray on the path to the wild ravine. It’s okay this way. I’m used to it, admittedly. And I’m not what I’d call gentle beneath. Biologically predisposed to think diagonally, to cut through the grove and creep nocturnally, catty-cornered to the sun soaked drove. People have got stand in line, so I stretch miles between us, chance the of

I have a love for beautiful views that began when I was a child. I’d sit on top of the monkey bars or sit in my favorite hemlock tree just to see from that vantage point. I watched setting suns and moonlit skies from this view. On summer nights when the neighbor kids were catching fire flies and eating ice cream, I’d sneak upstairs to stand there in that spot watching everyone below. I pressed my nose up to the cold screen to feel the cool air of summer nights waft in on m

She was squished up in the tire of their pickup truck when I heard her meowing. I crawled under and found a little grey fluff of kitten, not much larger than my hand. She had grey eyes like me. I named her “Storm,” and snuck her into our basement until my parents found her and then she disappeared. I never did find out what became of her, but even as an adult I think of her sometimes.

I go away Are just three words I use sometimes To break the silence of a fragile state I go away, I say, when the moonlight breaks Through tufts of cloud wisps Blue light spilled out at the windowpane I sift through moods and claim An imagined room that’s furnished With a small wish To go away

I’ve been casting you in lineaments, you vaporous thing. You’re a distorted mirror that bends ‘round my mood. A cold surface of marble sublimity. I etch your cheekbones with my fingers, high and smooth. Two planes set flush beneath the eyes like me. You, ageless woman, The Queen Of The Abyss. Sometimes you seem a bit too cool to associate with me. Pure inhuman ethereal wisp of my subconscious feathers wistfully the dream. Your fingers spread like spirit things that st

I quiver like the white moth I found perched on my bedroom wall. Bad news flutters in, in traces it seems. First an omen, then an ache, then a fever in time. I lay awake in the dark and I find that I quiver from imagined states and doomed possibilities. He came home with a paper. And he stood at the door. Just a paper! To proclaim! That something’s not right! I speculate in bed sheets and I dream nights before that it’s ugly or nasty or sinister too. It’s that spot.

And gold drips through fingertips —coagulated sunlight— soft globs of me spilling out everywhere.

I want to bruise you like fruit, plump and ripe. I want to use you and abuse you. I want to chew on you, blood vessels bursting like raspberries, malice contorting my mouth like a bright red smear. I want you to squirm like an antelope might, thrashing, kicking, fighting until the end. And I want to drag you down and drag you under into my darkest place.

I’m neither here nor there. I feel instead. I feel that I’m far off like stars and cool night air passing through the window, breathing in and slipping out again, a hushed love affair with an imagined state, the feeling of freedom, the freedom of flight. I’m not a woman but a dream instead and I feel…

PART 1: I’m not sure I’m the obvious choice. I’m not bold or powerful. My brothers were always more forceful than me. My sister was always more steady than me. I have small bones and a fainting reflex. Whenever I see blood I faint. I was shy at first. I took long to first start speaking and when I did I spoke. In. Broken. Sentences. For. Quite. A. While. I felt afraid of scary things or ugly things like spiders or darkness, needed help with checking pockets and shoes