Boxed up my trauma, needed to contain it Placed it in storage in the back of my head My access is blocked but it works as a liquid- dull suffer leaking like a virus Too small to see, just not to feel the cloud consuming my chest But it had to come from somewhere, didn’t…

I was not invisible You could see me in the wading crowd not another faceless mask ,floating into a train, but it was my face You saw it burnt, bent The way it had frozen ,stuck in place, You also saw my tethers bounded, chained No one else saw what I carried ,down the same…

caved in, like glass cracks still hold, if tension does not let go- the pain; be the shield, even though I’m made of glass? stay safe, stay numb stay tethered and tense don’t break- you’ll shatter build a new? salvage shards distort the view ahead, if we’re clear you can see I didn’t break from…

To my true self, I am sorry I abandoned you to become a version of myself more easily digestible to people I wanted to like me. I am sorry I got lost in the tangle of trying to understand what the world wanted from me, rather than asking you what you need. I got so…

I’m American, face down in the soup. Only fools wish our names to mean somethin’ ’cause we gon’ die a glorious death- hunny never learnin’ to taste the water.

Finding answers at the bottom of bottles that you forget by the time you wake but you’ll || grab the poison || You’ll || try again || You look back wondering why the clock never stopped—for You. The clock wondering, how You— got || stuck || on replay ||>

California blankets- soggy, a week expired They say one man’s trash is, Well- it might be asylum. We wait, in a dust jungle. Resting and reading our shelter, around the Mulligan stew. Carcass for marrow, onion scraps for a punch We wait. Then we haul– with haste, locomotive Displacement.

Pearled decay with the pull of a cheek Expose your canines— playing fortress to a cursed tongue with your ears, I hope you see me—as I am. Your Precious, Abomination

Reflective surface given power by flame. Forged in a pit of hope, beaten to elegant form. Silver eager to mold- a spoon if that’s what you need a spoon here to please Please, a powerful beginning. Why a flattened start? Pummeled on the anvil of servitude- a hindsight bias, she could have used in the…