In that abyss. The holes in her head propagating. Splinters of sound. Fidget under her skin. People. Fierce infections of touch determined to find her weakness.

She is not immune to lonely men. Nor sad men. But she often confuses them with the manipulative ones.

The canyon. The endless pit falling into my hands. Relentless downpours of nothing. Drown failing fists. Until I am incapable of holding onto anything.

Anyone.

Years later. Frozen parachutes make us fall faster. I cannot hear what you're saying. You speak too softly. And I have grown deaf from listening too hard for all the things I had hoped would be said.

She waits patiently for the parade to stop. Climbs aboard the float after all the spectators have stopped gawking.

No one knows. Or sees her there. As the hours turn dark again.

Pacing in the echoes of their footsteps. Imagining she is not alone.

Counting backwards from zero.

The color of finger tips was quite pink when she reached out to grab the last brick in the little pig's fallen house. The wolf she whispered to herself is not deterred by mortar. Nor defeated by logic.

I don't remember who I had been. Before the moon fell from the sky and the whole of the earth became silent. I can't recall if there was, infact, a life before this. Or whether I would want it back given the choice.

The picinic basket lays still in her fist. Her red hood spoiling the smirk of death. The wolf leans in close. Big teeth showing through the beds he's worn. She pretends she is already dead.

So long that she thinks she is.

She loves each and every one of them. Slowly building her time machine from pieces of skin. The future makes her ill. With lives she not yet lived. The past shouts. But she can hardly hear it.

All this time travel is deafening.

All this counting is endless. Looking for broken needles. Courting dying gods at the bottom of tall glasses.

Maybe next time, she wheezed. As the cum erupted between her legs. All the sounds in her head. Vomiting at once. After a long frat party of men.

It's their cures I find offensive. Seducing the diseases. The banalities of profit. We are cartoons. Their anvils falling on us. We are pop up story books. Grim fairy tales saving ungrateful princesses.

Overwhelmed by the option of giving up. Dormant volcanoes. Their fingers hot with lava. Searching for willing asses.

We weren't even close. To where I thought I wanted to be. The backdoor. Broken bra straps. Calculating. How far we've travelled. How distant it still is.

Just Einstein. A Little bit of Asimov.

The science of thoughts. The robotics of love. As we work ourselves into the puzzle. Brief seizures of touch mislead the enthusiastic. Dying every night only to be born all over again.

I'm not trying to find. Only attempting to prove that it ever was. A few moments here. A few more there. And I am soon enough.

To know I was easy to forget. Pretty child spit out from the throes of choking gods. Swallowed up in the abortions of devils.

Fugues of skin vie to protect the tumor. Lumps at the base of her skull waiting for villains in short supply. Death ignores her. Much the same as life does.

It's strange how that happens.

So often.

The lie. The bitter acumen. Of taste. Sermons of poison. Try to explain. What I don't understand. About this body. The bait not withstanding. The hook still through my lip. Waiting to be thrown back. Suffocating in the process.

This life. In failing increments. The balance. Not absolving. Masks too thick. Gods pretending to listen. As the locomotive buckles under the strain of the stop. The tracks singing their quiet song. In strains of lost. As if I could ever find what isn't there.

The apes in their fortress stuffing the cannons. Some war I've started, but cannot finish.

I blink and it's all gone.

Alone enough at last. To be certain. It doesn't matter.

And it never did.

The little kick from inside the big belly of the darkness. Incubating. The fetus. The hungry child of nothing determined to be born.

The longest day. Digesting. Breathing skin. Thundering chests. Roaring eyelids. The shortest night. The few words said. The miscarriage. Birth happens only as collateral damage. Life assumes it is self-evident. The insect thinks the world is small. However far it can walk. The dust lands. Escaping from soft skeletons. I'm getting smaller. I'm staring. At nothing. Certain it is there.

Because I say it is.

Because alone like this is not an option.

Not for long.

At twelve years old she discovered herself. In the shadow of the clothes she'd taken off. It was years still before she would find there was a whole world out there. Beside herself. Full of girls better off without their clothes and men inclined to assist.

Say what you will about the lottery, someone wins.

Sure, everyone else loses. It's like life that way.

Not that dying would be any different.

Life after all, is merely the sum of the skins we're determined to wear and those that we're willing to discard. It's easier she's found if she can forget what she wants and focus on what she can have.

Dialogues in cream cheese. Soften too slowly. Villains say they know. They do.

Maybe everything. Perhaps nothing. It's not the answer that matters. It's how she arrives at it.

The garden still grows though she's not there to water it. The sun still burns though she hasn't seen it for years. In fits of arithmetic is how he touched her. In hernias of algebra is how they made love.

Integers of flesh extrapolating the sum of paradise from dead skin.

She was twelve years old, maybe thirteen when this big world finally began to make sense. She finally learned it wasn't about what she had. All that mattered was what was absent.

One color more. Sheets coming undone. In fits of skin. As if we were alive once. Or something similar. More than just time in its infinite travels. Or the remnants its fire leaves behind.

Just colors. Dots anticipating the sun. In sharp bends of light that break too often.

What was easy is hard again. Preachers on the pulpit blame Satan. But I know, amongst us the devil is innocent.

I see the answers. I just never write them down. I psh the switch on the lamp still expecting darkness.

I'm not alone, but it's too close. Gathering her robots. She warns them tomorrow is arrogant. And we are merely the consequence.

Of lazy gods and spoiled children.

Spiders on the porch. Darkness wakes the web. Laughing through her fear. Her embarrassment at having been born. In stages full and bright with she tries on the threat. Patient to let it consume her.

Her eyes exploding with people. Parachutes of skin that navigate her fall. The bile of hope fouls her dress as her cloud wretches. She continues to climb. Noticing too late that the steps to the bottom are so far apart.

She sells herself in little bags. Small handfuls of change. She removes her face. A vending machine of woman. Doling out fractions of touch. In minor orgasms.

The lie of the self is that it wants happiness. Or is even capable of producing it. The majestic feats of drug we imagine are within our means.. The abyss of consciouness only chemicals can quell. Delicate kisses of ocean on dry beaches. Deposting the dead in the same places from which they took us.

Stealing the living.

These empty hands helpless to stop them.

Coming and going as they please.

Eternal. Uninterested in the mating rituals of broken men

Spiders on the porch. Neglectful of their webs. Paralyzed prey waiting to be eaten. Light bulbs inside the wounds. Switched on again. Illuminating the disease.

The constant.

The gods of lesser men.

Everywhere I am. Sultry lies in the cough of skin. As if I could go that far. In either direction. See you there. Make sense of these long equations we call touch.

Ants on the cake. Cockroaches in the frosting. The ensuing explanations of dead men. Long novels searching for characters. The density of inhibition convincing me that time was mistaken.

Them. Overhearing. Every minute of until. Escaping. Realizing nothing was the same. Except what had always been.

Awoken. By the sound of dying. Or those that would pretend. To know how close it is.

The pig smiled. Bloody. Lacking cheeks. Laughed loud. Through crispy skin.

Feeble are the moments that insist on this life happening. Dead snakes sifting with poison. Wearing the fangs. Flaunting the footprints. In frozen eyes. Seeing. In thick ears tempted to hear. Fat tongues. Trying to say.

Everything.
Is strange.

Lies I wish to live. Sheets I cannot replace. Though they are stained. Words I cannot take back, though they've never been said.

All these gods shouting my name in unison. As if I exist. As if I matter at all in these numerous worlds we vainly attempt to claim.

Everything is strange.

All these paradises are tentative. Every curiosity is a threat. As the tree leans in closer to tempt us with knowledge.

I don't want to know. Never did.

Everything is strange.

As her panties come off. The sincerity of the lie is medicine enough.

Everything is strange.

Everyone is a stranger.

Gentle is the anxious skin. Irreversible conditions of the flesh. Faces like ice cream melting. Sticky, sweet dead things luring the scavengers. Doll's eyes and vultures necks. Empty clothes at the foot of the bed paraphrasing the wrench of my toes as I slip into that familiar conundrum of touch. Naked time lines. And the people who would flaunt them.

Not afraid. Not deterred by. Consequence. Weak demons shoving their blunt needles into dead skin. Arguing with puppets. Accusing the stage. Minor treasons in lengthy alibis of men. Weak cures for strong diseases. The tornado of when. I was not alone. Or didn't know how well i was.

I had my gods ready. I had yards of skin to use against them. Negotiate my ideal hell. A carpet of lovers to burn in. And no excuses for anything else.

Cut those strings That make me woman. Sew up this hole to which I am indebted. Dance the puppets in your grip. Spoiling the poison between us.

Remembering dead volcanoes. The rain on the glass not deciding which image was real. She threw all her photographs away. To begin again. With nothing.

It's the best way to start. The only way to end.

Seldom as we are. Perfect theorum in the calculations of Pythagarus. The geometry of touch yielding to the formula of division.

Even those small clouds can make it rain. Even little claws are able to draw blood.

Dead volcanoes erupting with pieces of skin. Empty becomes her.

Still the kitten is not to blame. For the scrathes on his face.

And dying is not a disappointment.

Long movies at the back of her throat. Silent ones. In black and white. The dialogue of demons unheard. Yet obvious. Waking up is the hardest part of falling asleep. Closing her eyes. Hoping they won't ever open. Resting the bottle beside her words. Wondering. If anyone has heard. The sound. Of letting go.

The aliens under her skin. Searching for a logic. The time machine in her fingertips hustling to take her back. Or forward. It's hard to tell. She doesn't know. If it's the future or the past. It all looks the same. How do I tell where I am. When everywhere I go looks the same?

It's just time she assures herself. The liar in my birthday candles. Assuring me I am old. It's just time. Convincing me I can't remember the things I'll never forget.

Kittens glued to the carpet by claws they can't control. Stories I see no reason to tell. Skin. Velcro ripping away. The future ripe enough to to swallow.

Something like falling asleep. And also like waking up. Trying on the meat. Her underwear red. Her bra too loose. I don't know. Don't want to know. What I haven't seen since this blindness. Mousetraps at the edge of my world killing anything capable of finding the cheese.

I'm over. I'm already done a long time ago. Puppets are left. So to their strings. I can't stop them from making me dance.

Words favor the liars. Actions favor the strong. What am I? Just the lonely branch at the top of the tree. The monkey with the novel in his hand that no one can read.

Where I was. Where I am. Places like carbon. Duplicating. Coins dancing in pockets.

Waiting for time to stop.

Or for someone to notice it still hasn't begun.

I could go anywhere. If I ever bothered to try. I could go anywhere, but it's so hard to leave where I've been.

Years she said. With Vaseline in her eyes. Cloudy and slick with a devastating permanence. Dimes in the washer waiting to be found. Ten more wishes I'll never get to make. Clothes on the floor looking too much like I'm still in them. Breathing in the stabs of moonlight that slither through vinyl and glass bars.

Moments that strut out the front door only to later sneak in the back. Shame. Ringing dead doorbells and listening to dial tones. The weak songs that put me to sleep when drugs disappoint. As they often will.

Just like people. Only more loyal. More human.

A lifetime. Several I think. And still trying to understand. Anything at all.

Evil? Of course. Good? Just as much so. Shit in the snow. Almost too much contrast. To see which is which.

Shaky hands open the door. Close the window. It's cold outside. It's hot within. Leaning close. For the first taste. A negative slowly developing upon her lips.

Then becomes forever. Now becomes if.

Photographs of faces. Calm tragedies occur in silence. Heard only by the deaf. The words spew in shattered ricochets of tongue. Nervous. Putty cheeks offer truth as their only confession. Ignoring every wish. She bites down.

Destroying the fountain.

The air shrugged hard. Scraping loudly over her breasts. The confection of her skin laced with sour bits. She walked. Paced. In the small span of her decision. Elastic moments snapping back. Calendars in her chest erupting with the future. Withering with the past.

Everything gone. Nothing forgotten. The air not noticing. The chisel in her head. Carving. Culling yellow from crimson. In puddles of when. Time still tasted her. She it.

Alone in herself. Alone in anyone. Close. A lie told by anxious fingers. Touch. A treason of the heart. Sex. The coma. The machine. Keeping dead things alive.

Nothing ahead. Nothing behind. Travelling outside the confines of skin. Emerging from the asshole of time. Covered in its shit.

Yesterday still on her list of clothes to wear. Before she gets old. The matador. The sad songs. With heavy horns. The red cape between her thighs. Doses of anger. Sneaking into the cures.

The brainwash comes in stilted intervals. I'm free because they say I am. I'm happy because that is what we are.

The cardboard of her lips not retaining the words I'd written upon dirty cheeks. The smother of the first touch. The starvation of the last. We died with pride in humble graves. We lived knowing it was purposeless. Heaven not reason enough. Hell no deterrent. Calling our demons by name. Christening them by the faults of our bones. The devil does not frighten me. Since I know he is confined to the prison of my skin.

The pus. Thrones of dead gods. Stuck to filthy crowns. forcing me to change my bandages.

The infection omniscient. All my diseases are gods. All my angels lie about how close I am to heaven.

Ripe cold sores accuse her lips. Of saying too much. Hearing nothing she begins her journey again. The start and the end interchangeable amalgams better suited to the chemistry of touch. Girl. Woman. Child. I wish I knew the difference.

You can live hard on the quarry of defeated men. Or you can live softly in the velveteen of cowering addicts. It's not the choice that's hard. It's the afterward. Deaf hammers pound mute nails. The wolf exhales on the piglets. Straw houses blown down. All these lives a lengtty fairy tale.

Little girls in the bellies of beasts. Fooled by beds.

Not a thing. Knots in things. Crusty bandanges of skin. Flaking off. The butterfly in his fingers finding the wings this worm never did. Not in side. Knotted insides. The obvious hangmen.

I was silly to think of you. Or of anyone in that way. I lose sometimes to the child in me. I lose myself sometimes in the illusion of flight. Or rather that a pair of wings would be sufficient to grant me dominion over gravity. I was young. Am still sometimes. When I drink too much and listen to little.

Sex some would say is just a hole. And its plug. I guess it is. For most of us. Just pretending to love what doesn't love us. The treason of flesh pervasive. As I indulge the concept of men. Dicks too obvious. How could I ever had been tricked into thinkiing that I was close enough.

Building snowmen out of what's left of the frost. They make me warm and everything is gone. Every thing is. Stalled gods on their flimsy heavens. Waiting for constipated lions to fart.

I open my eyes again and there's nothing I haven't seen.

Nothing I have.

Nothing at all. Except the the way I remember being loved. Or at least the moments I wasted thinking that I was.

Someone else.

I throw my pebbles at the icicles. They remain. As sharp as ever. I guard the king a little too much.

And lose again.

Lie, she said. You always do it. Feet. Toes. Fingers. Pretending to know what they feel. Take me back, he said. I've gone too far. The future is passed. And there is no place for me to exist. I'm dead before I was born. I could save myself, but I won't.

Guilty wagers in between. That life and this one. Seams in the teddy bear favor the stitch. But I've lost my needle. I guess it's easy to forget. But it's just as easy to remember Just look.

Seeing comes in convulsions. Seizures of touch. An ambulance of lovers. Stuck in traffic. I don't mind dying. It's the waiting to I hate.

Stroke the apple carefully. Release the poison. Convince the devil you have a plan.

I don't want anything.

That is the problem.

The boomerang. Life constantly coming back. I'm only aware of everything.

And nothing.

That's what's wrong with me.

Sleep is loud. Charcoal eyelids breathe their methane. Insinuating explosions. The surface. The bomb. Completely innocent.

I hold the match.. I wait. For the world to blink. But it's never does.

Chewing loudly. I listen for the cartilage to ask. Where the bones have gone. Certain the future has an abundance of cannibals.

And that the past has all, but been consumed.

I can't taste anything. But I can feel it dying with each swallow.

Lanterns. Burning light. Trapped in glass. Saying we were sorry to the cards. As they careened across the carpet. Deals we made long ago. Asthma of the cunt. Suffocating tired tongues. Speeches. Rafts. Going over the falls. In barrels made of skin.

Seldom is the beginning. Too often is the end.

Madness is living just to live. Genius is knowing when to die.

The sewer in his kiss. Searching for synonyms. The cradle sleeping around us as we jostle it into submission. The tattletale of touch in each press on the bed springs. The ache. Leaden genitals tearing away from useless bodies. Our endeavours as useless as our expectations.

The atoms on his tongue. Splitting wildly. The measure of his manhood. in the shallow of my pain. The vague of the bomb catching up to us.

Everything was gone. Nothing had changed.

I wasn't even close.

No more. antidotes. The lure of the sickness prevails. Dirty clowns smearing their faces. Caught crying again. Nothing to want. Like that. The calm abyss of failing. To be loved.

The artists in our skin carving out the touch. In nervous chisels of the stone. That conceal us. The kill. Words bite enough to suffocate. I wanted to die anyway. I just never expected it would take this long.

Needles in the heart gathered the drug. Extracting. Not giving at all. All this high in my head lasts longer than it should. Broken ladders to climb again and again. Slowly ascending to where i've fallen.

It wants to be death, but it never is. THe wake of stranger's skin contemplating what it will take. Tiny earthquakes of men destroying everything.

I can't remember the last time that it mattered. but I know it still rememebers me. I hear it. Practicing the lies I once worshipped.

I pity all those moments. Forced to explain theemlves to people that can't understand.

The scales that weigh us agaunst the inertia of convenient explanations.