pugohate

i spin in what's left of the bathwater, shaking hands fumbling every thought. my fingers have become bigger. they are clumsy, plump and sweating, overturning words and entangling tunes, symphonies turned car accidents; watch as the wreckage burns. my back has become sloped. it is vaulting, a valley of nostalgia, of empty promises and disappointment. i layer sweater after sweater overtop, does it hide? does it hide? my mouth has become swollen. my tongue is dry and fat, filling every corner, pushing meaning and words aside, so only mothballs remain. i am transparent, a ghost of what i once was. spin, spin.

          The telephone rang three times, echoing in the huge, hollow room, before it was picked up on the fourth ring by a slim hand.         “Charles! Charles, by God, you finally picked up!”        The man named Charles winced. “Adam, there’s no need to yell.”         “Sorry,” said Adam. There was an expectant pause while he seemed to struggle for words. “But Charles, I’ve something to show you – something big, no, something huge!”          “Can’t you tell me over the phone?”          “No,” Adam answered adamantly. “It’s too important.”

In theory, we could stand in line in Costco forever, waiting for others to move until the flesh rots off our bones and drops with a heavy sound into the dust green basket. In theory, we could read every book ever written, picking mistakes from pages with red pencil crayon like spiders sucking juices out of paralyzed, glazed flies. In theory, we could nail our hands to the pavement, slip thousand pound rings on fingers shrivelled with waiting. In reality, in reality: ashes ashes we all fall-

Oh: these words were ripped from an untasting tongue, blessed in water swarming with dead flies. Oh: these words were bled from hole-riddled hands unfeeling, unseeing, paintbrushes cracked and dried. and oh, these words these Words!

he walks in the door, apricots and cream, and turns into the big bad wolf, playing symphonies on my piano key ribcage. "sing to me," he says, pulling red down over my eyes, "sing to me, sing: what do you see?" i see: a porcelain doll, chipped cracked face dead dark dancing eyes and spreadeagle on the floor, a martyr for the ghosts. now three broken teacups, three chairs overturned and porridge splattered on the walls like congealed blood. and the corpses of the small hang creaking in the slightest breeze toes still twitching, dancing forever and mouths still open, as if to speak, purple tongues protrude. the big ba

One day I lost hold of my tongue and told you how beautiful you looked painted bruised and broken. Laying heart to head you laughed, looked up - irises drawn by the hand of a child met iceburg blue. But I have worked at your glaciers, I've chipped and chipped, like my left eye. You stare at it in bed, mention that it's speading, little legs stretching themselves out to every corner of my eye. "Shut up, fuckhead," I reply. When you do, I reward you with a cold cloth on your burn marks. I remember when I was eight, I went swimming for six hours in a chlorinated pool. It didn't hurt at all, until I got out, then it burned like

After days of blizzard when the world doesn't stop turning but starts and stops and starts and stops like a drunk driver, slamming on brakes at intervals - after these days, I sit in front of the mirror and stare, marking every imperfection on this sack of bones, as a militant father would target the flaws of a rebellious child. On these days I stare out the window at my dog, I am outside, knocking near her face, watching as she whimpers and lifts a paw up to touch mine: I blow smoke against the window, taunting - 'you can't get me, you're stuck, standstill, freezeframe,' I say, and I hear her muffled cries and wonder, does

this canvas stretches before me fingertips of white cloud my mind and leave dizzy streaks across my eyes. blinded, i use spiderhands - to feel, i would give my club foot, and the white frost of the window, and the memories i have forgotten. - i will let your sharp teeth dig into my frayed nerves. i will slide down your throat and live in you, blocking words and breath, so your face turns purple and lovely, and your swollen tongue falls out and onto the floor. - deaf and dumb, i left you a present: a splash of ink on a sheet of paper, like blood on the hand of a child.

i am two parts guilt, two parts anger mixed with nausea and stir, blend, repeat. * i snuck into your ribcage last night. the sharp edges of bone gored holes in my knees and my back and my front but it was warm and safe and i love you. * and the whispers of 'everything will be okay and everything will be moonshine and sunlight and rain' curl around my head like smoke, twisting and pleading and who knows about someday? * sing me to sleep. sing me of the screaming and the fights and the crying and then switch: summer sun, bronzepale skin overlapping overturning world of forever.