Microbiology

The role of fantasy,

an "intuitive microbiology":

Where her body pushes forward and her mind plays minstrel and monster. A chemical surge of adrenaline, cortisol, and the scent of grapefruit. 

She will become delirious. 

T-shirts and gym shorts. 

What kind of feminine is this? 

The first of Spring. 

The taste of salt and bittersweet feeling of disappointment braided with glory.

Triumph comes slowly 

and she waits for the downpour like the rain.  

In the meantime,

she stares at her hands as they age. 

Your energy, she says, I love it.

Take me. 

Kill me.

Destroy my bones.

Kiss me. 

Kill me.

Weigh down my chest with both hands. 

I am fortune's unfortunate fable. 

I am chance's indiscretion. 

I am pretty until the next week.

I am wise until I am on the floor. 

I am yours for the night. 

Crush me. 

Kill me. 

Destroy my hands for grazing yours. 

I want. And that is too much to bear. 

the hymn of a minimalist sycophant.

All rise for the 

queen of detachment. 

She doesn't give a shit

about you. 

And your reign will end.

And she will not balk or resign from her attempts 

at a coup that fucks you. 

This angry, bitter, and heartless march

towards a throne that 

doesn't exist. 

She will be livid 

about nothing

and about 

everything. 

A crown woven from paradox

and dissociation 

honed at 

age six. 

here; never

Here in this place

I am reminded of your hands, and

the way I didn't want to touch the fabric of you

for fear of never pulling away. 

I am reminded of your hands on the back of my neck as you asked me, close and warm, "Does that feel good?" 

There are things I will never say. So instead, 

I burn alone. 

I taste spit. 

I bruise the soft spots above my breasts. 

I want to be enveloped in you. But instead,

I burn slowly. 

I wait. 

I build an altar to you in the pit of my stomach and the swell of my hips.

I sing in the car and I move like dancing,

in case I should see you again. 

This ballad

of a fucking arsonist;

let me burn. 

an image resounding

This terrible beauty is a weight. 

Start again. 

This terrible beauty is a. 

Start again. 

This terrible beauty is. 

Start again. 

This terrible beauty. 

Again. 

This terror. 

A thing of the past, she says while her heart is clamped between the molars of a great inky vastness that threatens to consume her. 

She is shaken like a toy. Back broken. She stands for no one, not even herself. 

This billboard beauty. This echelon of success. A paramount of perfection. To be the ideal is to climb a mountain that was formed before you were born and has stopped growing. You claw at it, but the rock is immoveable. Hikers die here from the height and expectation. 

You will fall too. 

Start again, the monster says. It's breath sits hot against your ear drum.  

Start again. 

The sound.

Here in the now of it all

we, I, you, us. 

The melodic cacophony of my lungs beating against the back of my breasts. 

Did I love myself once? 

Before is a time I struggle to recall. 

Like the white breath of roses,

it smells too sweet to stand on its own. 

And suddenly in the now of it all

I am a thousand beating wings;

a loudness. 

What does the queen call a pawn? 

In the depths of beauty, we find

what we want

And give away the hope of becoming 

something more. 

A swan drowns in the lake she grew up in. 

I drown in you. We. Us. 

 

comfort for creatures with sharp teeth

That girl says,

vehemently,

"I can do it." 

The child cartwheels 

on the front lawn. 

There is a forgetting

that started long ago. 

A door at the top of a long staircase

is never opened. 

And everything is purple. 

She wants to be held too. That small creature with long limbs 

and a broken heart. 

She cries in bathtubs

and runs up stairs. 

She is her own night terror...

a beast in the clothes 

that her grandmother picked for her 

to wear. 

Roll up the sleeves

to drown out

the sound

of the 

wild

wild

ocean.

The child, the girl, the woman. 

She will never be one, screams the beast. 

There is no peace here, 

she bellows.

Yet,

when the woman presses soft leaves 

of blue lotus to her cheeks,

the beast finally cries.