Cadavers on the walls. Smelling softly of desperate men. Open sores in his timelines where vagrant hours fester. Shadows on the bed. Fingers striking ambivalent keys. Her breathing. Just another songs he can't quite play.

The fat of words in her throat. Rain paused on the glass. The storm awaits her next command. The shrug of the pillow against her head. Alone at last. Nothing to spoil the villains' coup. Fallen always. Now they can see it.

Needles in her fingers. Calculate reality. In the distant hums of wagging dicks. And the stutters of broken men. She drags out the scale from between her legs. And waits for him to notice the blood.

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.

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.

shedding skin. layers of epidermus rationalizing the absence of skeleton. The rain so loud. As I converse with the walk. Through the dark. The crawl learning. How far it is. To knowing. Or not needing to anymore.

angels on the backs of men. saving us?

the mattress in the middle of the room demanding an explanation. as her hymen wept. red tears. do anything. i don't care what. just don't do nothing.

arranging the scabs. infections blossoming. through the soil. casual cures with faces made of men. bent daggers under her fingernails. searching for explanations. whom to want. Amongst the thunder. Long summer nights grieving loudly at the base of heaven. Gods slightly shy of saving the dead.

The funerals. Long. The euglogies. Short. The flesh adamant. To tell the story of the snake. The poison apple in us all. The beginning. And the end.

The future a cup of tea. Sweetened with when. The lemon was still sour. The future. In selfish incremements. Of skin not avoding what is to come. so sure. so confident. there is no tomorrow.

Flies. On the shit. Time travel isn't excuse enough. Lies. Bit of sober in during those long songs. Plastic heels on the doll's missing feet. Children of men in rented tuxedos. There's nothing to gain from this experiment. Nothing other than knowing alone is better. For the both of us.

I could poll the tortoise. Ask him how long the race lasted. But he could only answer as long as it took to win. Bodies. Like flies on shit. Tongues. Like maggots growing in the dead.

I could count the second between now and then. As if this time machine were viable evidence.

Watching the wolf. Huff and puff. The pigs with their straw houses.

Lacking such fairy tales I just wait. For a better villain.

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.

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.

Ready to die and not knowing how. Such an unfortunate predictament.

Suicide is illegal. Weird. Why? Because people think they're that important. People. Bits of toilet paper I use to wipe the shit from my ass. People. Articulate monkey's talking to deaf gods. Praying. Pretending anyone's listening.

There's no reason at all for anyone to live. We're all useless. Replacable. Mice in traps. Selling each other happiness at a profit.

Suicide is the answer. Because the world could stand a few less people in it.

Why encourage people not to die? Why tell strangers you care if they live? Because mortality is too much to bear. Because god took his phone off the hook and satan's voicemail is full again.

I've always been dying. Coloring in the carcasses of demons. Grey rainbows of skin deciding how sad it was. Being her. The liars looking for the off switch. To change burnt bulbs. To convince rumplestilskins the child is already dead.

Suicide is the answer. To every question I've ever asked.

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.

Reactions dance like crippled sleep. A murder without a corpse. Revising sober. Rewriting apathy. Paper dolls fucking their scissors.

I don't. Won't. Know. Or admit to remembering. Ever having felt anything.

Now is circumstance too confident. Now is shit waiting in yesterday's bowels. I can't touch what I can't see. Nightmares electing better Satans by which to sin. I cure myself everyday. By night I'm sick again.

Ice melting in empty glasses. Words said too late to matter.

Strangers.

Broken nails everywhere. Bruised fingers pointing at what isn't there.

Silly girl, he said. You, with your eyes sewn to the back of your head. How do you see where you're going?

I can tell by where I've been.

Pretty girl wearing your ugly face. Do you think you're fooling anyone?

Yes. All of them.

Silly girl, he said. You, with your thoughts carved into your wrists. Are you dead yet?

No, but It feels the same.

Sad girl wearing your happy face. Who are you trying to convince?

No one.

Everyone.

Life is something the living often overlook. That's the clinical me, not the poetic. That's the girl with not enough stories and too many friends. That's the woman who want to be alone, but not for the reasons she is.

Life is a measure. Of breath. And pulse. And skin. A flash on a monitor. People give it essence. If they can. Maybe I just want to die. Or in other words, have never wanted to live. Don't see the point. Kissing happiness's ass only to be covered in its shit.

Wrong or right is irrelevant. You're all dead.

Some of us just tend to notice.

The trap door in the tiny car that lets all those clowns come out. Like so many men I can't remember now.

Sad gifts are given. Wings pulled off of helpless insects. They are dropped, but don't break. Skeletons on the outside. Skin underneath the crust. Burnt apple pies still leave me with the craving.

The people I know. Or thought I did. Reruns. Old cliffhangers forgotten. Corks ripped from curing hearts. Reality TV. Shitting faces caught on tape. Wiping asses chasing toilet paper dreams.

Sad gifts. Some not given at all. Champagne waiting to burst. The wires pretending to they can contain all that rage. Children subtitling their daydreams. Assuming the world to be as pliable as them. Silly girls with pink underwear making a trail of menses for random men.

Organizing the hunt in stitches of wedding dresses. And the names of children they haven't had yet. Strangling the semen in preemptive abortions. Following the juice of the apple as it drips.

The laxative of mutual skin shitting out everything inside.

Sleep me. Solvent skin smoldering with a calamity of touch. Far away and staring at little gods in their torn dungarees. The street outside her window. Broken crayons in crippled hands molest the paper. Memory is the cruelest kind of love anyone can give.

The streets are a secret she's never told. Pathways converge in rabid jousts. Take the door off. No lock can keep me out. This numbness. It makes me strong. It makes me weak. The darkness spreads its leg to give birth to another dream. But I'm still here. Awake. And searching for my dignity.

Trace me. Like a corpse. I'm almost there.

Wearing each other in this cold remorse. The anarchy of a thousand orgasms invading my judgement. Leeches. Sucking. Vigilante lovers build their forts under my skin. These little wars keep us busy.

These little wars become big ones waiting on a winner. Snakes without venom still biting.

Counting the itches in her underwear she can calculate how much sex would be required to stifle her depression. Gain herself control anew. How slowly the flower dies after being plucked. The thumb of the clitoris writing stories in places no one can see. Touch like a stone sending ripples throughout so much stillness. The skin of the water cut. Letting everything in.

Counting her emails she can estimate the last time she had sex. And with reasonable accuracy if she ever will again.

Picking seashells. Eyes of ocean. Fingers of sand. Sorting fragments into reasonable bargains. She was ready to pick the apple, but it picked her instead. This garden is too small anyway. I'd rather be unhappy. I'd rather hate myself than them.

Counting the years between she brainstorms a new protagonist. All those other stories done with her. She searches her thoughts for fresh heroes and villains. Knowing every story requires both. And that sometimes they are the same person.

She asked him which he wanted to be. And he answered her.

I'd rather be the hero, but I can be the villain if that's what you want.

With soap still under her nails she dug little holes. In smaller ones. The hours thick with fat. Tasty angels with their wings to suck on. The smell of sober making her nauseous. Knowing over doesn't wait for the right time.

It just happens.

Clean. Curious liars imagine the truth as it would suit them. Loose fit utopias name their charities after their victims. Trying them on with the price in the pocket. Without underwear. Or any reason to ask if over is near.

Love is suicide. Or life is and I get them confused.

A ripe watermelon waiting for someone to spit out its last seed.

There you are. Simple Satan's gambling my skin. Stray saviors painting white sheets red. It's her prom in liquid eyes. Dancing like rain upon the missing glass in windows. It's tomorrow already. Too late. Too soon. Wasn't. Won't be. Juggling those apples with so many missing fingers. Won't be tasting them at all. With all those bottomless baskets playing attorney to my death sentence.

I'm not a seed. I can't grow it. I'm not soil. I can't nurture. I'm just the weather that decides if either will matter. Everything else is just the folly of circumstance. Long overcoats left without anything to hide. Naked hangers laughing off the clothes we're in. The lottery of condition calling out numbers no one has picked. Warm legs on the carpet memorizing steps to dances they'll never dance with anyone else.

I'm a meal. Meant to be consumed. Dirty dishes waiting to be licked. I'm an appetizer. Meant to accentuate the hunger that is there. High heels for the heart. Soften the curves of that ugly muscle. As if it has anywhere to run.

They were close. Junkyard's dogs protesting. Drooling novels of touch. Chewing. Gnawing. Discarded flesh. Like aliens examining their discoveries. The universe laughing at us. Because the glass is just us.

My fortune is that I'm lost.

Little orphans of God. In bloated knapsacks. Decision just a grin. All the empty sneakers. Tongues on the carpet licking songs I'd bought long ago, but hadn't heard till now. Pimples from the face of saviors paint the mirror. Eyes like dominoes. Stand.

Waiting to fall.

I won't be saved that way. Surrendering everything. Isn't that what I already am?

People. An economy of submission. Little orphans of God work their puzzles in pieces of pieces. I'm broken. Assemble me. I'm lost. Come seek me. I'm naked. Dress me up. I'm drunk. And sober is all I can remember of you.

In lives obese with truth we starve on the lies. Little thunderstorms too shy to play in the mud they've made. Watch.

Condoms left on the floor divide the room into choices. Tall glasses of unsweetened lemonade rape the ice in our drinking glasses. But I'm too thirsty to care how it tastes.

Too tired to argue with anymore gods.

Stale coffee hushing itself in the morning's vomit. Skin chalkboards littered with their fingerprints. Time our lawyer against a jury of drug. Little pinholes in the meat of us devouring the spices. Little traps in the hunt severing their feet.

The jauindice of love clarifying rapidly as the walls tumble in. Weak maneuvers of weaker vctims turning this raw meat into sustenance.

Without flavor. Without wish. We bite down. So sure this hunger will release us. Without taste. Without skin we look to the oven for redemption. And though its breath is hot I am cold as ever.

Fouled by the plates I've decorated with names not mine to say anymore.

I don't see how they can treat words like gods when we mere mortals so easily manipulate them. If anything we are the gods that make them covet. If we are anything other than poets. We are people. Addicts. Carving the globe in tiny chunks.

The franchise of sober recruiting all kinds of men.

Drunk enough to know forgotten is an adjective.

That the world we sampled is bored of us.
Of recipes for happiness. Stale dragons. Erased. In coughs of fire. Lips of asbestos poroous with death.

She adjusted her glasses. Balancing them precariously upon the slope of her nose. A small nose. An unimaginative breathing device culled thoughtlessly from the excess of her cheekbones. Wholly non-indicative of attention or ethnicity. A plain doorstop for the bottles thrown open to her lips.

Seeing is a strange phenomena. Casual and unrequited. Sticky notes lurching onto her thoughts in a yellow hail of passive suicides. The poison in the second hand trickling into her veins. Calm infections quietly filling her in with black.

Every road blotted out. The whole of the map completely useless. Staring at her arms in vain oblivion. The atlas of herself indecipherable. Every destination an inkwell. Each landmark lost.

Left alone.

With the moment she realized she always had been.