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

To scrape beneath the surface brings with it its own mortality. To bleed and feel a fire made flesh. Ruby colored pulp trickles downward, sometimes slowly and at other times with a flush of emotion so to drown out the hours and days and weeks and years of otherwise monotony. Sloshing up, spilling over, at moments gushing out, until it’s all spent at the bottom of the hourglass—that damned silhouette in which we drove with a turbulent force your vibrance and my rage. To fee

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

The key is to detach and then to reduce it down to the roots, strong solemn things that grip the body, and smooth out the mind in copse rippled monotony. It’s the giving in of things and letting out of things until the spine bends the wrong way, then sets, waiting to be snapped back, not at once but continuously creaking at the vertebrae. One, two, and three. Society does take its toll on me and I learn that I cannot bend the wrong way as other people before me, trying to de

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 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’ve been standing at the threshold of things, hesitating and ruminating, wondering if the place I’m going is better than the place I’ve been, wondering listlessly if I’m at the edge of me. I push ahead only to fall behind again.

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…

You kissed me at the drive-in, all coarse and unrefined. Your rough hands in my fine blonde hair, smoothing out the crook of my arm...

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