the female obscenitycaptures, climbs,creeps my body like a thousandtoy soldiers come to life with knivespunching and pinching and pryingme open—a flimsy can kind of daywhere half my body seemsto leech away like crimsonacid from a crumpled old battery

i’m down to 2-D: merelya sticker with the image of a strangerflat and floppy my musclesno longer my own to moveis to scrape myself off in a processof agonized peeling alwayspretending I am not shrivelinga nursery out from inside of me

my emotions a hijacked flightand me trapped on boarddon’t fault the passengersblame the self-appointed crewyou wouldn’t be laughingif your hands were tied too

fancy wrappingssoft and fuzzy thingsheat, gratitude, sweetsall placations perpetually lacking —pitiful attempts to paintthe pain into a pretty oneI just can’t see the rosefor all the thorns

9 yearsof rousing speeches haveyet to do the trickin making this predestinedcompanion seem cool or even hipevery month the same conclusion:turns out she’s just a bitch