Poetry Projects

In color and dreams, 
succumb to faith.
Dastardly, he seems; I say:
I am not a woman of God.

Punished for these flaws or
perhaps they were the punishment;
for who? Not I, I believe, must not be I,
I am not a woman of God.

I’ll rest in the grass as my bones
are reduced to ash, my lungs evaporate 
to the stars and my sight will dim. I’ll think:
I refuse to be a woman of God

or whoever This voice may be,
taunting and knowing:
“Do you wonder how you will die?”

How could I ever tell them the truth:
Of how you licked me clean of the flavor 
and boiled the soul out of my eyes

and how you then plucked those eyes from their 
sockets with one hand and strangled me with
the other? How in this room you

look me over like I am not apart of the bones
you’ve already discarded. 


But maybe I should be pleased, and, 
once again,
consume my own flesh for your perfect gaze

like you once did.

The gasoline that lingers in my blood
aches of the tears you weeped into my
open wounds.

Diagnosed with a random assortment of
winter branches and leaves spilling from my gut, 
half crumbled and half feeding that infection that coats 

half of the vital veins and arteries stretching
all the way up to my throat, where your
nails gently linger within my skin, still warm.

Yet I’m cold, and these legs are cold, just
like the entirety of my skin, and the wind is 
cold, and the rain is cold, and your eyes are cold,

and the dirt is cold.
You place this smoking, burning match in my
hands as a gift, burning my flesh,  and I wonder, only, 

would you see my bones in the flames
of my body’s carnage weeks after the
smoke cleared? 

I’m choking on my own blood, metaphorically 
of course, because I won’t interrupt your evening
with a cry for help that is so clearly orchestrated

to suffocate you from within. I’m falling to the floor,
clawing at my own hair while they all sneer and I’m
so disgusted with myself and tired, I’m tired           ,

but I’m the one who’s standing at the end of the night,
back turned to you as I leave, because
how can I bear to look at anyone else?

It’s a hypothetical, something realistic yet
unreasonable to expect to happen within
the near future. A reunion isn’t scribbled onto

the next week of my calendar. No, in my nightmares
it happens when I’m happy, and my eyes 
meet yours and I’m a reminded empty.

I won’t look you in the eye. I’m not sorry
that I am so disgusted with you that I
can’t bear to ever acknowledge you again.

to write about objects, to find
the red vibrant light in the minute and
to focus on the intricacies of the tree

rather than the forest fire
and the crime of arson that caused it,


and the gallons of water used to satiate it,
the carbon dioxide that polluted the air,
and the thousands of animal carcasses that

burned alive while
I committed the crime of observing it.

The hardest thing about hating
myself and the static that lingers
in my eyes every night is the fact

that change is brutal and disgusting
and painful and cold and revolting
and real and me. A paradox

I exist in, rushing outside at one 
a.m. in the terror and cold just to 
stare at the stars and ask if I am 

worthy.



I am not.

I wouldn’t fall for the siren’s call and song,
and I pity those that do. Those fools give
their life without knowing it, and you take me

for that fool. To love a siren is to gouge one’s
eyes out in favor of the waves, when instead my
gaze lingers so delicately and delusionally so, and 

withdrawn onto you, that I would rather cut out my own
tongue and block off my free will and slice off every single
inch of skin so that I would just sit as a polite statue of bones, 

the dedicated observer in your statue gallery viewing the entrance, guards, and judgemental critic eyes:  
my whole world.

I shouldn’t get my hopes up, God,
because the moment I think my devotion
will be rewarded with faith, I lose you

once more and die
just to restart again and again
and





again.

I imagine myself aflame amongst
your coldest wind, where these flames
may bend and weep and touch the

dead wooden shell; and catch fire, they
must to wound me awake and to remind them
of my vitriol and active aggression. Yet

I fear I’ve been far too passive and unsteady,
as I imagine myself by an unguarded steep,
curiously looking out over the edge in wonder only 

to be set ablaze by the Hell below and
you
once again.

Can you promise me that if I dissipate 
from view, that you’ll be the front to 
that search party, that you’ll still

send me adoring letters and gifts to my
home address, that you’ll remember me
when you forget because I recall you in

the depths of my mind long after I’ve died;
and can you tell my parents I loved them, and
declare to my soulmates of friends that I

don’t regret my decision to cherish them
and
that I wish I cherished them more,

because I see you in every elevator panel
and the doors’ reflective gloss and the outdoor
pathways that are a straightforward maze;

but, my love, you aren’t real anymore or
maybe at all, and I fear you see me the same,
yet will one day say goodbye until

.