a letter that will never be sent

i must have only been 6 when you
told me you'd strangle me, or
when you slammed the fridge so hard the
kitchen shook and we, silent at the table with
our tiny spoons, could only gaze at our
cold lunches, feeling numb in the body, staring
yours on the floor like a car-crashed hurricane

i must have only been 10 when you called me
nuisance, shouted the soul out the body
only 12 when you said i embarrassed you, pushed
my adolescent frame into a clique of
snickering girls and persuaded me how
stupid they thought me, how
inept and awkward my speech

i must have only been 14 when i wrote
"i deserve to die" 20 times on college ruled
paper, only 14 when i penned the note of my suicide
in a pink notebook covered with photos of kittens,
only 14 when you lamented my inconvenience, punished
my sick, named me terrorist and ruins, said
it was so hard to mother me--my human too much


i was only a
child who felt too large in her body


i was only a
child who felt too old for her age


was i not worthy of compassion?
did i not deserve your protection?
did i not have a right to your love?

i know some parts of you tried but
how much?

Home (i)

Home smelled of
rotten wood, tender but
decaying. And with
life perishing, we
grasped at the sticks
frail and failing

Home felt the
echo of hands reaching for
fragile places. And with a loud
crashing of voices, it
constructed a yoke
for the young


Home, the noose
and the knuckle


Home, the awful
putrid place

And,
Mother dishonest through her teeth

†axidermy

i am laid out on a table, they
are removing the guts
of me like a stretched pig, a
nail in each hoof on a
plank crucified

skinned along the bones, a
map stolen from the body, a
displaced geography of flesh

there is no stench, formaldehyde
painted and bathed, not
allowed to be dead or devout

there are no eyes, the
sockets scooped out, hollowed, replaced with
glass that is cold and non-sensing and

when they are done, i
am displayed like a trophy tabled
and dusty, dully reflecting the glances of
hunters and thieves, i

am a husk and a hole stuffed with
invasive hands, plugged with
foreign substance

i am not my own

iii. redeem

Hallelujah to the holy places, the
cosmos and country. Perch in the
sacred pews of the trees and hear the
glades preach a sermon. Birds bringing
baptism and the ocean a communion; partake of
the portions of living and cleave to sky and sea.

And so near to me was a grace loud and
hovering; struck as lightning to
pierce the blue of all dwellings -
above, below, and within.

So close I could feel it smile, hear it
stare the skin, taste the merry laughter of
its breath. And life appeared to me,
translucent as a wraith, whispering, wise
and whirring both in wind and wave. It
implored me to inhabit every space, swallow
the stretches of a groaning expanse, then
closed its eyes with mine and
prayed for a birth and a bloom.

And I knew that what I knew
was good

And I saw that what I saw
was true

And I felt that what I felt
was new

ii. restore

I sit alone on a shore amongst the
solitude of jagged stones, they
rise like a crown to the earth,
superb in the sunset.

The sun is a fury, shakes its
face at a worn, worried world. And
maybe the light is a kind of bleeding
that stains every place it flows.

Sunlight traces its thumb on the
faces of the willing, marking them
awake and unbroken, tinting the
cheeks with an untold brightness.

And here I feel alive, like an
open vein to the sea, lungs
awash with the scent of brine, skin
shivering with a salted zeal.

And here I am painted, thick and
colored in a setting fire.
Maybe all there is, is mercy in
the midst of this.

i. revive

Float in a tomb to the
watery grave, a
second death within the waves

Wring the wound of the chest,
damp and heavy with the
weight of a whimpering child

Velveteen bruised, unreal as a
cotton rabbit, once hugged and then
discarded in a fever blaze

But resurrect the love you had
once been given, stitch the
remnants deep in the heart's fabric
and fasten the fingers in its warmth

Perhaps this is the second coming, a
miracle for the dead to
rise again and gasp anew

Lower gently the body into the
depths and watch the water
cradle the wrists and calm the arms

As it rises and goes, sense the
scars loosen from the skin, rinsed
away as soil to a newness within

fraught within the ripples of an
unlit room, fever-searching for a
heartbeat beneath the waves, reach
into the empty and pull up
any root you can find just to
know it's real

color the blank spaces with the
remnants of your light, it is
small but enough to break the
thickness of the night

and i will resurrect with the
daughters of dawn, who endure
the starless evening, who
brave the injured breaking

Like a stammering, a
stuttering of the heart, I
am aching for a tenderness, a
warm embrace, hand beneath the
chin that lifts so gently and softly
And i wonder where this love has
been, slips through the fingers of a
bruised palm. Family a phantom limb,
togetherness a flitting sparrow, and
all of these on a tree tall and
bending to the sky

We all stare in the same direction, we are
all blind to the ground, we all have
scars around the neck, we have
all hugged a gun

So sing into the folds of night until it
tears into the sun, until the dawn stirs and
cracks the cold mirror of the dark

Maybe we can find our way home.

1:15am, a wish & a vision & a prayer

I wish I would get hit in the head with a
baseball bat, lie in my own pool of blood and
push my fingers into the crater wound - feel
all the gore like brains and mashed up flesh -
But somehow I'm strangely lucid and
staring at the red staining my fingertips.
I sit up and emerge from the cavern of the
body, hollow as a cave and cracked as an
empty shell. I float upwards and above and
fall, land on my feet with a thud and kick the
dust and stones. And suddenly, the me on the
ground is only bones and the ribs an arch and
hearse. And I see the sockets of my skull
and they are bursting with weeds of all colors,
small and ugly but resilient against the decay.
I begin to walk and the dirt crunches under my
shoes. I am in a barren land, pale dusted path
with quilted patches of faded grass, like the
old earth coughed and the best it could do
was a field half alive with no bloom. But the
soil sounds full and stretched as skin and I still
hear it breathe if only in the saddest sighs. I
also see trees that are teary and worn, lifting
up the most tired of hands to the light that
burns them, basking the midday until parched
and broken in the wasted places.

Gentle god, let me
die and live in between, a
ghost in the land set to wander
for no one's looking for me

in the winded flesh
the feckless drink
the marrow of my bones
as if my wasted gaunt were a
feast for the starving, as
if my scarring skin were a
stable to rest


i am not a martyr for the merciless

dear mom,

i count the candles on my cake and
count the same number of heartbreaks
you made. they flicker inside the chest like
birthday flames but bear no sweetness beneath

in august i will turn 26, and this is the year
i am still unsure but more certain of this:


most of me doesn't
love you anymore

A Prayer to St. Dymphna

To St. Dymphna, patron saint of
suicide:

Subdue the splintered sorrows in
the shatters of the mind

Smite the slaughter of the soul so
to death will death die

Settle the ocean of sad that
swims the depths of this flesh

Soothe the tremors of the body and
the earthquakes in the bones

Sing the skin to heal the
unfading of the 15 year bruise

Stitch the swelling sore with
strings of blazing light

Chain the devil at the feet and
prick his neck with a sword

Chant the gentle cure and
patch the heart with gold

Dear St. Dymphna,
make me well.

Life lessons

1. The world is so big and I am so small. I know so little.

2. When two people speak, they converse with their entire universes behind them. We can only speak from, see from, hear from our own. Empathy and imagination are bridges we build with the resources we have.

3. These universes are always in motion and our own are in flux. All things are variables and all things engage with each other in infinite ways. These variables are acted upon by other variables who will then act upon as they are acted upon.

4. All variables of existence (histories, experiences, beliefs, values, moods, personalities, interactions, and more) are entangled with each other. To only regard one as the sole determinate of existence is a kind of myopia as it is a kind of choice.

5. A relationship is two people agreeing to exchange their terms and language for the universe. With negotiation and trust. Yet none can ever truly remove themselves from their separate and infinite contexts.

6. All we have is trust. It cannot be demanded or forced. It shouldn't be but is often exploited.

7. We are all aware of the violence we commit. We either justify, excuse, deny, or don't bother with it. And all of these for different reasons.

8. Everything happens at once. Everything exists simultaneously.

9. Everyone chooses and champions their own metrics. We all measure reality differently and at various resolutions.

10. We can either judge or understand. One or the other in our moments. The choice we make is a product of our circumstances.

11. Choice may not even exist given the space between the thought and the synaptic reactions that lead to the physical, emotional, and psychological reactions. Maybe choice is the poetry of the universe.

12. Seek balance in all things.

13. We are all alike and different.

14. We only know what we know. We don't know what we don't know. We can only bring what we have to the table.

15. Change is constant.

16. We all have our own bullshit.

17. We will never not make mistakes, misjudgments, or turn back on our own decisions and choices.

18. "Truth" is a language and a vision. It is not universal or transcendent.

19. Love and grace and beauty and compassion are the only transcendent realities. We all grasp it at different times but will never own it. Be wary of those who claim to.

20. These things you are blessed and cursed to learn, forget, and relearn forever and ever unto all eternity in every life and iteration.

The Bruise and The Baptism

I had a vision of rinsing off a bruise, as
if it was paint dried on the skin, but it is
not a surface stain and it goes deep into the bones.
So everyday, I must wash myself, dip the body in the
waves, coax the wounded colors out from deep
within, wring the purple from the flesh, let the
painful hues sink through the ripples of the
water in which I bathe. And though the skin is
ripe with the terror of these imprints, and
though I am afflicted with these sores, I will
baptize the blasphemy of this trauma and
daily make myself new.

Become,

Cling to heaven's gates, climb
faster, quicker until the
sun surges in streams and
consumes this woven tomb

Form steadfast in the bosom of dusk
I can taste this twilight as a
smolder on the tongue, feel it
pour an infinite sky down the throat

Hope knocks to rattle the
graveyard within the chest,
buries them to their own and
fills the space with new seeds

Unfold the self as paper
Creased but not torn
Untie the soul from sorrow
Bruised but not bound

Half of living is pain and the
other a glory and flame
Half of loving is an ache and the
other a beauty to rewake

Change the metaphor of seeing so you
breathe out of the eyes
Like waves to bathe the body, let
light flood into the lungs, leak the
daytime to the blood bright dawn

God sits at the wayward places
-carves a home out of the dirt
And in my heart I saw the
luminous mountain, growing ever
taller 'gainst the background of the sun

A plea to the saints of the universe

To all the holy places and saints,
hear this my plea:

Lift me as a prayer to the stars and
promise the constellations will carry me

Pluck the petals from my heart and
scatter it to the skies so I may
sit beneath this blooming and
mourn with beauty to heal

Soothe the sword that impales the chest,
breathe to me a voice that I may
shout this golden hope

Level my eyes to the horizon to
see my new birth and sing to me
sprawled among the stars

Scoop the moonless gloom out the ribs
- my flesh not a meal for the starving
I am bent like origami full of creases
but sweep the stains out the blood

Baptize the bruise in the
galaxy's ocean, bestow me brave
like an anchor to the bones

Graze the heavenly flames with tender eyes,
ease the weeping wrists and
scrape my skin of rust

If I were to bury the sun
beneath the soil, will you still
lead me to the celestial city and
its superluminal bright?

Embrace me, stream of stars

Terraform

Hands in the soil of the heart
Rake, grow, heal the earth until it
Resembles home

I am an exile of a thousand words
I am a prisoner of these wounds
I am a fugitive bound to flee
Yet still I fall into this fracture

I still feel the pain of being unloved
I still taste the thorns in my throat
I still hear my mother cast curses
I still glimpse her leave the room

I am still 10 years old in the soul,
bent over a sink with a knife
I am still counting pills in the cabinets,
walking alone on a road at midnight and
writing my last goodbye

I am 15 and trying to overdose on the couch
I am 15 and too young to know how to die
I am 17 with friends who cannot hear me
I am 17 and dream to not survive
I am 22 and planning to drive off a cliff
I am 22 and plead with myself to live

I am alone in a multitude of places and
I am still broken for home

Gaze the body lower its
wreckage like a ship lost at sea
Feel the heart, gaunt as
a graveyard of bones
Sting the teardrops trailing
down the face like dying stars
Spirit bruising and swelling by the ribs

My dear depressed darling,
My dear sad child,
Let your anger save you
Let your rage redeem

Even if I am alone, I will
bring myself back from the brink
I will believe that
broken doesn't have to break

And in the shadow of the
splintering sun, I will
nurse the light, injury gleaming

Death
to whom I shall
succumb or struggle
I am a child, I am a
ghost that visits my own funeral

Run run run the gun
Sleep until the sad is no more
Watch the world without as
much as a word of comfort
I am still alone but maybe
I can still stumble to the sun

Frantic grasping at the skin
try to keep the tears closed, try
to keep the limbs attached
but still I am filled with holes
still I wade into these waves and
sink with a wound I cannot heal

Crusade against the sin of
your mother - alone and
always alone - sometimes it
feels like life is the
chronic disease and I am
cursed to cope with this
terminal illness

Hollow in the eyes and
hunger without treatment
Loose skin worn like
clothes ill-fitting, was
never a child who could
carry the weight of her family
Hell helpless and stained

su·per·lu·mi·nal
[soo-per-loo-muh-nl]

Origin
1950s: from super- ‘above’ + Latin lumen, lumin- ‘a light’ + -al.

adjective Astronomy.

appearing to travel faster than the speed of light

What is the meaning of forever
when the pathways of our lives
no longer intersect
How we feel these fingerprints
upon the heart and how they
stain the mind in colors - it still
moves me

Count the stars of our memories
against the endless expanse and
weep the widening of the
break between us

Do we grieve for time past or
for time lost within the breach?

Bloom upon the bruise, hurting
for an answer, thundering inside but
still the rain makes all things grow

But I still can't let go


(why did i say goodbye?)

Everything happens in reverse
Waterfall back into the eyes and
the blood leaking inward to the veins
The bones unbreak, the teeth unshatter, the
heart continues to enlarge
And as I step forward, a great resurrection of
the mind occurs and I am now undying,
strengthening at every step

Is this what healing feels like?

Rise from the sheets of
your bed, undying even as you
feel the skin sift like sand from the bones

Hold your arms up against your face to
guard against the wind and
grow larger
Hear the brightness of your heart tower as
firm oaks against the veil of night
Kiss the stars, swim amongst the galaxies like
endless lakes of dreaming and
baptize the body in the sun

(you are alive)