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everything is horrible right now, but it won't be forever.

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on growing up.

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the bite of gentle girls.

written with lines given to me by @quecksilvereyes/@glasswaters! full text under the cut, with larissa's words in purple

[oh, my love, don’t you know I was born sugarspun?  it’s stuck to my fingertips, see,�� to the roof of my mouth. every sharp word drowns in syrup— palatable, fit for company.

like in all things, I dull my edges to hold the world, or what little of it I can gather. the greed is a hunger, gnawing down the  marrow of each bone never the form it should be;

it was cast in shape before I took my first breath. a body, fit for consumption— just don’t look at my teeth.

when the nurse birthed me, she cut her hands on its sharp edges.  with her blood on my skin, I took my first breath. look, now, how the hollow in me hungers. love, love, I cried endlessly, the plea that will go unanswered in every tomorrow.

what voice sings even now? breathe, love, fill the empty space in your lungs. swaddled in breaking strands, I gave my first wail. this, too, echoes through my life.  cries are ignored until silence is my only comfort. carry me now soft and gentle as any other lie.

sugar, honey,  sweet nothings are still nothing no matter what you dress them in. I am ever hiding the sharp of my canines.

had I been anyone else, I could have shaken loose the sugar to reveal steel. but I am only ever myself, so I swallow it down— smile, love, don’t you think I’m sweet?]

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When you spend your whole life locked in a room, escape becomes terrifying. All you know is here; the cage is a comfort, every inch known to you.

This is your life. This is all you've lived.

Here is where you know the rules. There is no confusion or fear. It's all the same and it drives you mad but you can't imagine it any other way.

Wondering is addictive, forbidden, the sweet taste of rebellion on your tongue. The golden fruit, the blood red apple. The thought: what if there's more out there? What if I leave?

Freedom is a thing with wings and you've always walked with your head down but the sun is warm when you reach out a hand to feel it. Golden light between your fingers. Almost an embrace. Wanting makes a home in your ribs. You can almost taste the wind in your teeth.

Look up. The door is left unlocked, if only you'll open it.

Somewhere out there is the world.

One day, you'll find it.

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60 mph.

a contrapuntal poem; this can be read straight down, first lines only, and indented/second lines only.

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I ; who/le.

a poem about being half-Okinawan.

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what little sisters remember; a poem about siblings.

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the cyclical theater.

ACT ONE.

Curtains rise. The lights are blinding. Actors fill the stage, setting the story into motion.

In the wings, you wait. 

The shouts of the stage echo throughout the theater. A gunshot would not startle you as much. 

Backstage, the world is still. Everyone waits for their role. There is no other reason for them to exist.

ACT TWO.

Walk in the background. Be more than one person. There is a crowd here, you try to tell the audience, even if it’s just me.

There’s you, and you, and you, and you. 

Actors and stagehands trapped between curtains. Audience trapped in the seats, held down by the dark.

A light follows you. 

You can’t see the world beyond it.

ACT THREE.

Here is a happy ending where everyone pretends to have gotten what they wanted.

The couple is together, the children look to a bright future, the conflict is resolved. 

In the wings, you wait for the break of

                                              the chandelier—

                                                           the catwalk—

                                                                       a bone—

The curtain falls. 

The world stills its motion. 

You keep waiting. It will always come. Nothing ever survives the story. 

INTERLUDE.

Murmur of conversation. Lights on the other side. A brief respite.

Costumes are changed. Makeup is fixed. Lines are studied.

No one will look at each other; we only wear the faces we are given and those faces are only visible on stage. 

Who are we when the story is paused? Who exists outside of these roles?

You don’t have a name. 

You are just a background character meant to fill in the space. 

You wonder what it’s like to be on the other side.

ACT FOUR.

Another screaming match between sisters. It is here that you thrive, stepping out of the shadows and into center stage. 

You, who was never important before, suddenly become the very thing that holds the play together. 

The audience can’t take their eyes off you.

It is exhilarating.

It is agonizing. 

The fight is scripted. You can only save one and that is a choice made for you. One sister dies, knife to her throat, and one sister watches from the cradle of your arms. 

You are not important until death has arrived. Perhaps you are not a background character, but a banshee prophesying death, or a grim reaper whose arrival is inevitable.

ACT FIVE.

Here is the end: bodies on the stage, blood pooling around them. The audience is silent and horrified. The lights burn, unrelenting in their exposure of the crime. 

You are alive. You are on your knees amid the carnage. 

Here is the one who is meant to be your heart; dead.

Here is the villain who set it all in motion; dead.

Here is you, the survivor; alive. 

Curtains fall. There is no applause. 

You walk back to the wings and wait for the story to begin again; all new bodies wearing the same old faces.

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family practice.

cw: cannibalism, body horror, needles

. . .

A severed finger drops to the floor. The blood has been sucked clean out of it, leaving only pale skin and bone. Dirt is stuck under the nail, jagged and worn raw. 

This one must have tried to climb out of the garden.

Above you, Mother slurps loudly, eating her fill. She’s so hungry these days. She doesn’t notice anything beyond the hunger. 

You miss when she would carry you around the house, humming as she held you up to see the visiting hummingbirds. They were so small and fast, darting between flowers and feeders with their long beaks and vibrant plumage. 

Sometimes, Mother would hold her hand out and a hummingbird would come to rest on it. In those moments, Mother was magic and you wanted more than anything to be like her. 

She smiled when you told her this and passed the hummingbird to you. So gently, she nudged the fragile creature into your small hands and it was the brightest moment of your life. The sunlight was warm, Mother was pretty and soft, the hummingbird was patient as your clumsy fingers pet it. 

Then Mother cupped her hands around yours.

The hummingbird died restrained and terrified. The phantom of its heartbeat lays its rhythm on your skin still. 

Mother took the corpse and bit the head off. 

You couldn’t scream. All you did was remain in her arms, hands empty, and watched as the hunger began to overtake her.

She moved onto larger hearts after that. Dogs and cats and foxes. Then people; visitors from out of town, people wanting to see her carefully tended to gardens, people who should know better than to trust a stranger in Mother’s skin. 

You wait for an eternity before she finishes eating. Mother climbs off the table and walks away, stumbling as if she’s drunk. She doesn’t look for you. She never does, and that’s why you are still alive. 

From under the table, you reach out and grab the finger, pulling it back to you. The house is silent when you crawl out from your hiding spot and hurry to your room. The door locks behind you, and a chair fits under the doorknob so Mother can’t come in. 

Sitting next to your toy castle is your Doll, your favorite one, your only one. It had taken you so long to make, but it breaks too easily. Bits and pieces are always falling off. 

You take Mother’s sewing kit, the one you stole a year ago that she never noticed was missing, and thread the sharp needle. With practiced motions, you attached the finger to the empty space where the previous one had fallen off. 

The Doll is still bald. You wish there was hair you could attack to it so you could comb it and pretend you had a little sister. 

Mother never leaves the heads. Those make the best fertilizer, so she buries them under the roses. 

Perhaps you could steal some clothes for the Doll. All your old ones are dirty and stained. The Doll deserves to look nice. The Doll needs something to hide the rotten flesh of its body. 

Mother doesn’t change her clothes anymore. You could take some from her closet while she sleeps. 

It’s always safe after Mother falls asleep. She sleeps deeply when her hunger is sated. Doll in hand, you tiptoe down the hallway to her room.

The door is open. Mother lies on top of the covers, blood drying around her mouth, on her hands, across her throat. 

Setting down the doll, you creep closer to the bed. Mother doesn’t stir. 

You haven’t looked her her properly for a long time. Your memories are hazy, a mess of song-hummingbird-hands-corpse but you know Mother was pretty. She was prettier than any flower in her garden.

Now, she’s gray and gaunt and her skin stretches across her bones strangely. Her mouth is open, teeth yellow and black. The skin around her lips has fallen off, leaving open pockets of dried flesh that you can see through. 

She almost looks like your Doll.

You made your Doll pretty. You can make Mother beautiful.

Needle and thread in hand, pulled out of the Doll’s arm, you climb onto the bed and sit next to Mother’s head. 

You sew a smile onto her face. Mother sleeps through it all.

Mother takes people apart, but you can put them back together. You can make things better like this. Humming, you push the silver needle in and out of her face, tugging on the thread to pull it tight.

Mother will be happy to see your work. She always loved your sewing projects. 

Through it all, your hands are steady, hummingbird heartbeat singing in your palms.

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the last car disappears down the road. bodies are cooling in the bedrooms and the kitchen. windows are broken, glass all along the hallways. 

at last the house is silent. dawn approaches with gentle promise;         it’s over. it’s over. it’s time to find the light.

no more wails or wraiths. the anger of memory has died, embers cooling and ash drifting away on the breeze.

abandoned only by people the gardens are wild and lovely;         blooms awaken from the night         and cradle family graves with years of care.

silent is the property, a foreign stillness settling in the bones and foundations of the house. here is the aftermath:         blood and blades and secrets.         tears and memory and restless dead.         nightmares and dark.                                                                                       haunting now finished

here is the statue of a weeping woman. eerie in the night, with weather-worn veil and hands cradled before her chest.

a bird nests within her palms. her stone gives home to this body of hope—

                                    sweet song at dawn                         where there is finally nothing to fear.

- after the haunting (a.a.)

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Late summer sky & cicada song giving voice to August when the world feels heavy and ripe, the way a peach does in your hand                                   on your tongue                         beneath the press of white teeth

                                                    sinking into flesh.

Humid comes the heat, thunderstorm rolling in like a promise for change,  

            for something better on your skin—                     satin or silk or soft hands on thighs.

    Cherry red whispered against your lips a promise of sweetness dark & lingering in the still air; lipstick smears & locked doors,                                        Better than the rain 

Drops against your fingertips & the whole world turns gray beyond your arm. Not dark.      Never dark. Summer storms are color heavy—                             orange & red, sky in blush                             blue swallows all like a camera filter                             for that coming-of-age you always dreamed of;

Summer’s almost over you whisper, eyes fixed on a world ending       yet again, cyclical & soothing & more a beginning than anything else.

Steady heartbeat of                                 soon—                                               soon—                                                               soon— 

The sky is steady above you, clouds rolling from horizon to horizon. On your tongue is sugar, a remnant of something good a desire for what’s yet to find its way to your empty hands.

august in your hands. (a.a)

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the first thing you must do is insist upon your innocence.

no, you didn’t go out that night. no, you didn’t see anything. no, the mirrors in the house are covered for a different crime                                                              of knowing yourself                                                              of knowing you’re not yourself.

eyes catching in the window, reflection reaching out and                    you know them by the way you can’t escape them;

                                      same mouth same nose same tired shoulders                                                                   who else could it be?

say nothing. silence is a right you wear like a blanket, your only comfort from the storm. see the ghost but don’t speak the name—       

                               maybe they ran away, you say.                                                   they always wanted to.

innocent is not the same as innocence and neither fit you well.

                     bury the body. hide the knife.

their name is your name,

                    which is to say there’s no name at all.

- missing person report (a.a.)

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digital collage ft. blackout poetry from an old work of mine.

(original poem here)

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commentary under cut

nostoi: greek for “return”. used for homecoming stories; that is, heroes on their journey home. the most well-known example is the odyssey, in which odysseus goes home after the trojan war ends. there are likely many others that have been lost to time but are referenced in the works of other ancient authors. the aeneid is also a nostoi as well as an epic, as it is a hero’s journey to find a new home.

katabasis: a journey into the underworld, a requirement for ancient heroes to be known as “heroes”. many go to fight monsters, or trick gods. aeneas goes, lead by the sibyl (a woman prophet whom the gods speak to) to speak to his father and encounters dido and many fallen soldiers from troy.

not a hero’s journey: where in the hero’s journey, the hero has changed so much their home feels different though it is unchanged (ex.: bilbo from the hobbit). here, the home, by being abandoned, has changed.

aeneas, creusa: aeneas, the one who survives the fall of troy. creusa, his wife who dies trying to escape.

no shades reaching to embrace you: a common motif found when shades or the underworld is included in an ancient greek narrative, but reversed. usually, the mourner reaches out to embrace the shade but cannot, since they are no longer tangible, only image. reversed, the shades are unable to reach out or be seen despite haunting the mind of the you in the poem.

haunted house elements: the house performing human actions; weeping. the house having a skeleton. the house abandoned, haunted by its loss. watch jacob geller’s video on haunted houses if you want to hear more.

nostoi: a homecoming

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nostoi: a homecoming

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you dream of summer skies in the dead of winter. there's no snow, just an abscense of warmth.

this wound is always present; you either live with it or are consumed by it. grey skies and a distant sun like some tragic sci-fi where the dead can't be buried and are sent to drift in darkness, endlessly.

that space is a different cold. it's a sibling of winter with all the same emptiness but none of the hope.

turn to her, tucked inside your heart. reach into the organ in search of familiar warmth; its the same humid heaviness that lives in june.

hands wet, blood coolingー

summer born children all ache in the winter. you do not belong here. it eats you whole.

she is not here.

just memory. just ghost.

you were once young with her, puppy love and first crush, alive only inside you where the cold has yet to reach.

it tries. it tries.

better luck next year.

surviving winter. (a. a.)