“Psych Wards and Parentheses”
It was no later than 1AM- Gaia’s clock still sat sharp and familiar on my mind-
Though growing more obscure as the analog’s hands raced,
The locust’s decibel and the sky’s murky indigo tenderly weighed on my eyelids.
Nothing stopped for the 23 pills that mingled with my stomach acid-
Atop a gurney, cradled inside milky walls, the moon will pass over me all the same.
‘The fruit of intergenerational negligence hung low and rotting across plastic seats painted medicinal blue
embraced still and secure, lacking warmth and essence
(The closest proximity they’ll get to family nonetheless).
Charcoal shadows pool just below their eyes, render them concave, seep down to hollow their cheeks-
I can’t seem to find the lives we fought to preserve
When fluorescents overhead and TV screens cause more decay than illumination
(The bright side?)
Silence is a virtue that reaps freedom.
An expedited escape from a cage liminal it’s-
Where a trail of antiseptic frosts my nostrils
And a 5AM intrusion of needles and gauze rest in the hands of latex and polyester,
Inhuman, unconcerned, and artic-
Interconnect with the perfect breeding ground for linoleum-induced psychosis,
Where murals of hellfire taunt our gaze on shower towels,
Embers dancing across each fiber and thread-
As if they’re begging us to make their appearance known to anyone with a clipboard
(A recipe for 3 more days and 10mg of Abilify)
“The Sun, a Son, a Child”
The sun illuminated distant memories of youth,
It painted them crimson and dandelion,
and filled the air with the scent of the wildflowers
that made their appearance in pockets
among the open emerald field under our feet.
It masked what it truly meant to be yours,
the days my fingers brushed against the ones
owned by an unmatched anguish.
You said you wished I looked like her,
and then we kissed as bodies should.
I held my breath as my fear met your passion-
an association between the two formed
as they mixed in our mouths, caged by lips and cheeks.
Our tongues alchemists spit into adrenaline
as summer gusts tossed our hair.
The umbrella of trees soothed our skin
from the attacks of South Georgia heat.
You called us fate, my smile agreed
Yet my heretic soul sought a God with more mercy.
The romance of the photographer compensates for
the nuances it couldn’t capture,
like your words escaping,
coarse as leather, strung out like a whip
you cracked to callous me.
I was grateful and I was naïve.
You sanded my thorns and
reduced me to more weed than rose,
and laughed about it under the light of the
television and the moon and on top of my reluctant body
“The Anger Iceberg”
It was a dusk spent with dew-crested cheeks and serpents for fists-
Binding, constricting, and striking at the air
I was in my room and sobered by the weight of indifference
In a dusk accompanied by a page, a pen, a plate of flies and dried down dinner, and an open window
A dusk so primitive its only kin a womb
The kind of rawness that only lives in primordiality
Somehow, in this moment, failing to be tainted by its own awareness
It was a dusk that sauntered up my skin, a tease of a night
Tracing gusts around my ears before dipping in to whisper to me
That anger is a woman, a mother
A necessity, an ointment, and all-consuming burden
An infinite gentleness puppeteered by language,
As we hide the seeds of human oneness she sows,
And refer to our sins as her roots
Like she’s the kiss between knuckles and insulation
And the rod that reeled “bitch” out of his throat
We swallow her like rum- let her labor weather and dull sharp edges
tighten the grip around her neck and let her ambrosia creep down our tongues
As if we’re not the ones going to hell for this