don't defend me; i am not
a force to be reckoned with, not
a reason to persevere and

i am not selfless


forgive me for only being able to
speak truth in small whispers, for i
am too afraid to feel it.
i have idolized a salvation promise that
burns deep in my pockets, letting nothing
give pause
to the cleansing of cavernous hips
the absence that lingers, never accomplished, waiting
to be answered - "i am here, do not
forget me" -

and here i am giving you truth, since you do not beg
a fool's paradise: raw, unalterable truth in shades of
tonight's dinner splattered on the walls
                             (pale orangepink with vibrant splashes of green);
in hues that mimic the convolving specks
that litter the sight of a body left unfed
                    (if desperation were a color - insert here)


i could say that it is beautiful in the way poetic justice is brought about; i could remark upon the morbid allure of emptiness and how satisfying a reticent survival is and surely i could recite that nothing compares to the verisimilitude that you will never stop growing into yourself - 

all the mantras i have imposed upon myself
refusing to recognize the actuality pulsing as a wave that is
waiting with the threat of crashing into me


but it is none of that



it is self-imposed isolation and never being quite enough and spewing your disgust into toilet bowls and propelling yourself into painful cataclysm every chance you get; it is the ceaseless shivers that wrack your body and the secret panic when you stand and your heart rate elevates with speeds trying to reach right through you and out the other side; it's fear and exhaustion and insomnia that is marked by the malodor of puke and crying without knowing why; it is aches and an ascetic addiction that you can live neither with nor without and sometimes when it's bad it is rolling in quickly, all at once and even if it's over in a second, the lack of breath in your lungs lingers and smells like death when you finally expel it

making your mother cry but still going to bed hungry
wanting to stop but not knowing how
(the cost of serving the only god who asks
more of you than you can give)








there is no glamor to be found in
the addiction to self-destruction.


i am not a cause.
and when i can believe that, i will
discard concavity as a sacrilege
instead of searching out hands that can finish me
like i am some kind of lack of punctuation
it will be as if the waves have rushed back out to sea
because they know that i am not a place to make a home




i have given you truth but i will wait
to hold it as my own. if sustenance is sin, then -
i am a saint
wearing bruises the color of the lies i tell
             -  (he who has not sinned may cast the first stone)  -
i am a martyr by no sweeter name
who died at her own hand with
nothing left to give

for no cause
         at all.