half a year in review

in january i grew rotten with love

until my mother could no longer hold me,

scrappy and mewling, in her mouth.

their teeth, their dinners, their sweet red wine, i spoiled it,

i fermented in the cellar, in my gown of aubergine

in my hunger. i peeled the world open with my bare hands

desperate and sick like a dog searching for a dead body.

i found nothing but my own collarbones

and i fashioned them into swords. my body was no longer

useful as a body so i made it into a weapon.

and when i turned there was nobody to hurt

save for myself. soft flesh upon soft flesh,

begging to be opened up and turned inside out,

turned into a window, so that it might watch the sun.

in february i threw open the curtains

so that the moonlight might kiss me

with her butterfly mouth. instead the fruit flies

swallowed me whole like a rotting plum

out of season. their hungry mouths on my heart

something almost tender: like a knife drawn across

the bare back in sleep, the skin left trembling.

the not-kiss. what was left to do but surrender,

to the hum, the windows and their sea-breeze,

the nightgown and its white flag.

in march i was a dead thing, not yet found

or wept over or preserved and not divine enough

to rot gracefully. the sunbeams and maggots

sang songs of mourning into my hair. in march

i was all the words for empty.

a library spilled open on the floor like a mouth

hungry for matches - like alexandria in her nightdress

begging to be burned down. the earth did not want me.

the bonfire with its whiskey-ridden teeth beckoned.

the first death was not beautiful enough

so i had to try again. we kill dead things all the time.

burn them and return them neatly. just one go is ordinary,

shameful. i wanted to make things right. i set my world on fire.

in april i rose into the air like cigarette smoke

and swallowed up the rebellion sky.

all the leather jacket girls with their bloodred lipstick

watched me disappear into the night outside the party.

i may have wanted them. i may have wanted to be them.

i didn't know the whole story but it was so full of hunger.

my Great Big Cloud of want blotting out the moon.

and i was so fragile. the stars put their hands through me.

they carved a man out of my image -

wide-hipped and devilish -

and sent him up to heaven.

this was the end of the prayers

they would say in my honor.

in may i looked alive

if you held me in the right light.

like a drunkard turning under a streetlamp

who for one moment becomes a showman.

my ragged clothes, my moon-faced wonder,

half divine and half human and all sky.

i wanted to tell you all. i wanted to let you in

on my secret. if there were rooftops to walk on

i would have taken up smoking, had conversations

with the stars. i would have shouted from the top.

would have said this is so fucked up.

i’m something and then i’m not.

and by the way, what are we all doing here?

in our tender-hearted kitchens, our yellowing bedrooms,

bodies passed from person to person like heirlooms.

give me a break. give me something to work with.

in june i will tilt my head towards the heavens

and ask to be baptized by the sunshine.

at night, the moon will write love letters to my flesh, like

a high school lover sneaking in through the open window.

in june i will be alive alive alive - i will be a shrine

to the light buried within me - i will learn

to worship the things that i did not think existed.

when i grin, the ocean will roar between my teeth.

i will pray that for once, it will not

leave behind the taste of blood.