Thw box on its side. Three dimensions to blame. For gravity. sleep. and sex. The book. The tape on its spine. Choking on the words inside. Picking at the pages. Hoping for new blood. The octopus. All eight arms grabbing at the hours given it. At dead skin. Threading the needle. Sewing the pieces together. With riddles of how it still matters if.

The noose. In small sips. Of lemonade needles. Presweetened skin. The citrus of his touch biting hard into stale meat. Take it raw. Red and wet with the things we have killed. Swallow slowly. Everything is dead.

The dollhouse. The gemoetry of men proving nothing. Taking off her tiny doll shoes. In compartments of why. The drug too distant. The excuse too close. The years. Proficient mimes. The hours wasted comedians. Lost and saved in the same breath.

The tv muted. The walls determined to know. Why she's still awake.

Slow words fishing too long. In empty lakes. The colors were true. It was the bait that lied to us. I've had enough men. To be a woman any man would want. I've been silent. I've been loud. It's all the same. Touch like pantyhose. Tears easily. Leaves too much skin exposed.

Cocky men. Dicks wagging. Frail and obnoxious. Games of sex. Tiny Monopolies. Cheapen was she gave away. And all that she received. In her bed. Reveal the suspects. Pass go. Collect her. Masturbate. Imagine. Someone still wants. What you pretend to give.

Your words. Play money. Make you rich. Buy you nothing.

The old men. Penises in denial. Liars. Sad pricks. Boast. The edges of the woman. Fingertips of dolls. Wolves shouting through mediocre fangs. About how hungry they are.

I'm full of holes. None of which you can fill.

Old men. Virulent proposals. Thirsty dicks. Drink the puss. Dubious infections. Sicken the girl. Strengthen the woman.

Alone. Hopeless. I've been weak enough to recognize it in others.

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.

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.

Little men. Or big ones. I haven't a measure for such questions. Only a collection of moments. The scent of strangers like a perfume I've worn all my life.

I argue with the hour. As all women are want to do. It was no one's fault. And every one's. Red thighs rubbing together until the feeling is gone again. Bits of sleep left upon her pillow after waking up. Pieces of men in the bleach she soaks her sheets in. Pieces of shit floating to the surface of the wash.

I was trying to explain to time that it didn't understand us. We don't live in it. Just too close.

I was listening to the time expiring between us. Bleeding loud in broken sobs. Like a naked woman reading Dostoevsky for the first time. The swallow of truth in her voice as she began to speak. Of men. The ones we have. And those we let have us. The difference only a phone call. A disproportionate conversation about skirts still unworn.

The crime: just trying to decide.

The punishment: choice.

The urge. Selfish as it is. Stems of skin emerging from below. Pop guns and headless barbies our summary outline of the world. Even if I could learn, who could teach this deflated boat to swim. Life is random. And people do forget.

Those demons write their encyclopedias. Turning weakness into fact. The truth is whatever you wish to believe.

We must isolate it. Bits of bacteria on a swab tip of cotton. Each word an experiment. Desperate for gods loud enough to define it. Urgently to prove it can't be done.

If there is time in which we live then there must also be other places. If we can count how many. We can count how few.

If there is time at all. Ripples in the universe to tempt the lost. Into going places they don't belong. And thinking they can stay there.

The truth is only a distraction on this path to knowing. What I want.

And if I can't go back because I was never there. No one can remember my mistakes.

People don't wait. They endeavor to live. With or without us. Closed doors on the shadow of her casket. Love is a morgue. Drawers full of dead. The heart is an autopsy. Once you know you can't save it, all you want to know is why it's gone.

When I was younger I used to tell myself I'd learn the difference. But now I know I never will. Dead is dead. Whatever way you choose to bury it.

In panics of skin she tried to drown herself. Searching for the right ratio of drug to sex. Sure it was poison. Now knowing herself to be immune.

You can't punish lovers by ignoring them. They forget and you are left wishing you hadn't let them. You can't measure the velocity of love by secrets told, but that is how you can prove it.

So many familiar enemies. If only we could know who to kill.

You can play the wolf. Blow all those houses down. But no one's lived there for so long. How does it matter?

Small people carrying big bags. Short trips that last too long. Waiting for jesus with a hand full of matzo balls. Finding god in unanswered calls. I can only breathe when you're far enough. Neutered tigers show their claws. In long debates where there is no winner. Just adversaries and no one to root for. The cosmetology of people leaves me wondering if that is all we are. Portraits in attics turning ugly. Truths no one sees until the ugly finally catches up with them.

Living as this pale bishop. Next to the king. The queen taken already. We've lost. If the squares are any measure of our hearts. The treble in motion. The bass on pause. Almost as if you were listening when I said what I did. About falling asleep next to someone and waking up to find they had gone.

The only difference between sadness and words is ownership.

I'm rich. I'm fucking wealthy. By those standards.

Scabs of snot on her bed linens. Indicate where she hides her face while she sleeps. Stolen away from this world in small steps. Stewing in dreams she can't remember having ever possessed.

Making up sex in small gulps of friends. The ceremony of touch carrying on long after she has stopped counting. The years between. Then and now. Angry bears coming home to messy beds and missing porridge. Dead girls in worn stockings failing to reason with circumstance.

Pretending she had heard him when he said she didn't know what. A kite. Its long string teasing her hand. That she could touch the clouds. Move the sun. See again.

Power she muttered to herself. Control. This decrepit time machine in my head keeps trying, but I'm still not there. Nor any closer than I was.

I keep soliciting the cancer. It doesn't answer. I've scared the disease away again. I always do. Frighten it. Dark clowns with too much to smile about. Love is just the punctuation in this slow death.

The prayers of monsters make beautiful songs when I'm alone like this. Wondering which time I'm in. Which one I've left behind to be here. Negotiating with the me's I've created going back so many times to find what was never there.

My favorite part being the paradox. For all this to have happened nothing before it could have.

I keep trying on their faces. Moments of math rationalize the skin. In chokes of drug hoping I'll remember their collapsing heavens. Reconstruct. All the lies life creates to make these habits seem worthwhile.

Those tight jeans. They do fit. If I hold my breath deep enough.

Masks. Showing. Faces. Muscle discarding skin. Thick diapers full of our shit. Bright rashes chronicle the neglect. Chambers of god showing.In coughing quotes from dying friends. You want to be alone. So be it.

Masks. Skin is guilty, but has a great attorney. Skin is guiltily, but is rich enough to buy its freedom. Skin like Velveeta. Turning colors that should never be eaten. I take a little more off until you're bored again.

Destroyed. Impotent at every milestone.

An old man wandering the innards of a girl. Soiled diapers. Broken teeth. In jars beside my bed. Masks. In the time travelled between heart and hand.

Let is go. Let us collide with the path. Each footstep promising progress.

Every breath sending us back.

Even the first demon had a teacher. Even the last demon has to admit. We lied well. Even if not enough.

The salt it makes a mask so perfect. I almost want to wear it.

I was debating with the ink. Slivers of skin all marinated in touch. His cardboard eyes helpless in the storm. Goodbye. A rented tuxedo that didn't want to fit.

No questions. Just the test. To fail and fail again. No words. Only pages of faces growing blurry. Bland Polaroids trace the shapes. The color's gone.

He drew a cat on a piece of paper. Imaginary claws presumed the taste of blood. He prayed. Like any good catholic boy would. To a god more excuse than salvation.

Watching the moon trying to prove it's there. As it chases us down the highway. In doses of men she still calls medicine.

in moments of surrender when the disease is most appealing. She wonders out loud. How to tell the difference.

Or if she ever could.

Pictures in the numbers cry out calmly. Splitting tongues with thick teeth. Molars. Tongues. Giant spoons sop up the leftovers after the prey is gutted. I don't even see them. Shadows on the ceiling trying to convince me they were there.

Giant mounds of bone and muscle suffocating tiny breasts. Spoiling holes with too much skin. Turning these empty spaces into waiting graves.

The atoms in each breath colliding with theirs. Minor explosions that leave me defeated. Eyes like dice tumbling. All numbers. No faces. I want to be whole, but not like this. Cunning victims turn the predators into prey. So that they never know they're being eaten.

Grandma in her bed impersonating the wolf. Teaching me to be suspicious of everyone. Little lies numbed. Saved by the spider. To chew on later.

Just meat. Food. For someone else. Lopsided storeies they'll tell to someone else.

Ignore the trial. Focus on the jury. They will decide your guilt. Seduce the judge. Convince him to let you go. Rememeber what you don't know.

The mime laughing at all we haven't heard.

I can live with what I don't know, but not with what I'll never learn.

What I can't hear. In the pauses between the rain. Gnawing on doll's feet. Minor provisions for the blind. The deaf. The dumb. Gods in plain clothes on corners too dark to see. Their faces as they thank us.

What I can't see. Revisions. In thrusts of charcoal. Men. Layers of soot. Dirty chimney. Keeps the smoke in. Bad lies still coming back to challenge the poverty of fallen bridges.

I can't hear them, but I know what they're saying.

Forgotten dogs trying to run on three legs.

Bad dogs. Tails still wagging. Bad dogs. Little women.

Looking for old leashes.

Dead things. I know about them. The spark of streetlight just before the sun rises. The dirt from the well right before the water rushes. The pea tormenting the tired princess as she laments her lack of princes.

Dead things. Loud songs playing softly. Children pretending to be asleep when the bedroom door opens.

Drawing the pictures chases away the words. Broken bottles struggle to hold onto a dwindling illusion of escape. Dead things shift under their dirt. Sleep comes in the rapid intervals between breathing and screaming. Dead things. No one hears them when they say they are alone.

Dead things. All their open cages prevent them from being saved.

Paper planes. No breezes. I'm a fortunate zombie. The hunger still hasn't arrived. It never will if I can hurry.

Chewing gum. No teeth. The dead things count themselves while the living aren't looking. Heaven comes in strobe lights. Hell comes in footprints.

Snow. Dead on the road. It's never cold enough to hear. To ask them why they fall when there's no place left to land.

Dead things. Remembering us. Old clothes that no longer fit.

We are leaving. Headlights staring in my window. Autopsies on movement. We are leaving. We just have nowhere to go.

The man waiting for the elevator fascinated her. A stolen souvenir of humanity in a marathon of machines. Tired of running and never much good at it, she decided to forfeit the prize.

She was glad she did.

The eclipse took place just as it should. Skeptical lovers turning envelopes inside out. Looking for proof of something for which there can be no evidence. Satyrs in their bubble baths advancing their pawns nearer to the back of the board. Conversations like taffy stretched too far. And stuck to my teeth.

The road was humble. The lies arrogant. As he steered her away from the oncoming traffic. Eager for the collision she lamented his decision to save her from herself. Who was he to do such a thing?

Just a man like any other. Just a penis on a Popsicle stick called intellect. Just some hard caramel in a wrapper I never should've undone.

Bedtime stories for the rest of us.

At this angle the moon seems more a measure than a mark. For how distant everything is. Wax fingers perpetuate the flood of not forgetting where I have been. Desire like dominoes. One tumbling down causing all the others to fall. It was never fate. Just lonely people committed to their prisons.

The fork in the story comes not from the author. The characters are to blame. Interrupted epiphanies turn down the collars on heavy beds. The fluorescent lights make all the white sheets blue. So I can see the empty where there is everything.

The hours measuring themselves in years. Futures. A paradox of conditions not met. I'm here. And there. I'm everywhere I've ever been. Stealing paths not taken.

Drawing ears on deaf pillows.

He brought in the speakers. Inch by inch until everything sounded like she remembered. Too much treble. Too much bass. A lot of strangers paying for their highs with drunken women. Or postcards from their mother's they'd yet to read.

She turned off the amplifier and tried to listen to the nothing. Feigning deafness until they started scraping the chalkboard.

All the erasers gone they decided there was still time to lie enough. Black markers seeping through thin paper. She thought about saving what she'd written, but changed her mind when she found out the words had decided she couldn't be trusted. With all those little shoes that barely fit on the feet she'd gnarled playing so often with dolls she'd only remember by hating herself.

Taking off their clothes in tiny doses of hysteria. Sad clown smiles losing their makeup. Sirens at the back of her throat looking for someone to blame. Besides herself.

The fruit is over us. Bored.

Too cold to bleed.

The battery is dead.

Forgetful Stalins searching for their bus pass. In a world where everything is lost. Take us there. As the stars take the universe a little closer to our grasp. Unreal, yet possible to imagine.

Nervous threads hold the blanket to the floor. Waiting for indications from the absentee gods that those flesh stains aren't contagious. Staying naked like this. Without any skin on. Only seems to prove me wrong. It is a choice. It's just a bad one.

The communists had it right. Take everything in sight. Give all you have. You'll have nothing either way.

All I can want pales in comparison to what is gone. Weighing the dogs. Measuring the drugs. Equations of high make deciding optional. dying a formality amongst so many empty skins.

Turn off the stars. Flip the switch on the moon. Tell the nightnmares to be at the
ready.

I remember.

Everything.

Cartoon eyes confessing balefully. Gravity meticulously choreographing every expression on their faces. She steps on a kiss and laughs. There is no carpool lane for hurried moments. No desserts named after us.

We're just people. Meat wearing fancy undergarments. Totem poles speaking with wooden tongues. Everyone hears, they just don't know what.

Spoiled by so many lies she finally admits the truth.

The demons are canvas. And the angels acrylic. Still, life is all watercolors. Campfires hating the folk songs and ghost stories. Big feasts and only the carcass left to crave.

I can pick up the bones and make new people out of them.

In little bits of skin that nearly wore us.

Loose skin looking for drawstrings in the moment. Zippers in the smile that means nothing. Escaped prisoners in a long occupation of liars and sex. Found attics in a failing war. Salvation comes not upon being rescued, but accepting that you won't be. Some soldiers have guns, others only experience.

Browsing fault lines. Catalogs of men erupting. Chemical fires doused in blood. Until everything has fallen. And the pantyhose are all that's left of her flesh. Friendly enemies turn her surrender into triumph. She waits for the burns to heal. A puzzle of skin now, she waits to be solved.

Hooks in the meat as the knives carve the cow. All eyes discarded. Chains pull the the skin from the carcass. People dissect the shit from the meat.

Bad air fresheners and thin masks separate us from the things inside us. So many dead animals try to teach us to live.