Selkie

salty,sweet
sticking
lips to lips
and
limb to limb

Slut, slut
sweet world
you hold
goddess-like
in your palm

"Shoot", i say, trying hard to sound casual through the bass-drum beating in my ears. Can he hear that? Jesus. He must hear it. And why the hell is my heart beating so hard, anyway?

your memory
painting desire
like an indelible ink
onto my lips,
across the bones of my hips…

To Eric, with love – RIP

I fed to you the seeds
of my heart
And bit my lips
as you burst them apart

your kiss of bliss is a mystical thing
Life without it is an excruciating sting

...she took her shears
wiped her tears
and said “goodbye, you bloody locks
and ruby lips…"

i remember the days
when beauty
came easy

Hope is like rice paper…

The music of pain
beats into me…

Little girl me
dressed in a prison of ribbons
and Sunday dresses
hitches a scraped knee
over the branch of her favorite tree…

You are heavy as night
Sharp as a shaft of light
You sink into me
Cut right through me

I am Thirteen today…

but your smell
still lingers
like lilacs
on my fingers

If you run your tongue
across her parched lips
or somewhere below
the curve of her hip…

The nurse hands me a cup with three pills in it and some water.

"What are these?"

“I’m…yeah. I’m OK. I got a very bad idea in my head involving a razor, but I’m OK. I’m still around, anyway. Still trying to figure out if that’s a good or bad thing.”

The next morning i’m already awake at 6:30 – having listened to the raving woman wandering the halls shouting incoherently about somebody having been shot, beaten and stabbed…

...drug-induced zig-zag of sleep and guilt and tears and hysterical laughter and people who smear their shit on the walls and talk to creatures who aren’t there…