there is always the skin of an orange peel under my mother's fingers. her favorite fruit.
i am forgetting my mother's voice here. most days she is a specter and i can't tell the difference between her face and the underside of my fist. here i am cold, here i am a foreigner in my own body.
this is how it feels when the light goes out, i ask, maybe if i hold myself tighter, my legs tighter, he'll love me better. maybe if i stay together, if i hold my expanse together, he would be less compelled to swallow me whole.
i am a ball of twine unfurling in reverse; i collapse in on myself like a star who drowned in its own heat; i did my sutures myself with my left hand; my right hand hangs limp; my skin feels more like an "it is" than an "i am."
there is dirt under my fingernails. i was an early bloomer and he said i had enough sun. he plucked he and carried me. he cut my stems and left my roots, dried my petals on the hood of his car, but i
i cannot remember who i am.
i think in paradigms, i think if anything could save me it would be the fifth. five fingers on my hands and each of them cannot recall the scratch and scrape of your chin.
I DON'T RECALL, I DON'T RECALL, I DON'T RECALL
because i try to forget. i condense myself. i package myself into concentrate. i worship you like a child with stockholm syndrome.
if i am a man's home, where do i lie down to close my eyes and whisper to my daughter that i love her? where does she get to know that pain is a scab you pick off? that love is a choose-your-own-adventure book, not something divine and handpicked by gods and cherubs? where does she learn that no one can read the lines of her palm and "tell her this is where it all ends."
i feel my way out blind, as your fingers graze my hip like the curved edge of a saw — i fill with dust. i bite and claw and i am still a foreigner in my body. if i peel enough layers, will i forget? if i peel enough layers, will i get to eat my oranges?
is my mind chipped and readied like a canvas? waiting for me,
i am five and my fingers are as soft as the inside of a peach. i raise my hand, i reach, if i could paint, it would be red,
blue,
black,
oh god.
i stopped keeping track of time, now i only think in "here" and "there." "there" is but a memory, but "here" is always here, like a train that's never late or the blue in the sky, but i pray that one day the rails snap and thousands of tons of black heat hurl down this rabbit hole with me. i pray that my sky is red one day, red,
blue,
black,
oh god.
why did this happen to me?
if i give up my body,
do i get to go home?
PERSEPHONE;
(alternatively titled: abuse is a seven-sided room)
it's late but the vape dads compelled me. pls comment ur thoughts sons!!!
