the demand to share the terrible truth will not let me shut my mouth. let me spill, let the blood dry, iron crusting under your nails, i will not let you look away. you have brought me here and you will pay, you will pay in my blood, and you will watch, i will stain your soul, i will drench you in blood and you will never wash yourself clean. look into my eyes as the waters rise, see the despair you have never felt, and let her cold hands stroke down your neck, shoulders, back, she will hold you. let the absence of breath raise the hairs on your neck, let the prey become the predator. i will shatter you. i will flood you with death and you will drink of her draught. i will flood you with animal fear and you will not struggle, you will wilt under my gaze and we will burn. i am nothing and neither are you. hold me and i will show you the void, hold me and i will show you my pain. i will give you the underbelly, i will give you the knife, cut me apart and i will show you, cold and slick and revolting, you will learn the touch of death. i will guide your hands to my slaughter and you will watch me die, you will never be clean again. i will stain your soul, i will fill you with sinful blood. you will look into my eyes and see my despair, you will remember it forever, it will become yours. you will hold my gaze and hold my despair and you will drown with me. this is your indictment. you will hold the knife, and you will see your guilt. for you have sinned.

the visible body, the visible body,

it is visible, it is visible.

look away from this gasping fish

the quivering throat and all its arteries.

look away from this violent ocean,

breaking beauty into waste.

look away from this sack of lard

marker of burdensome womanhood.

look away from me,

look away from me,

stop seeing me.

don't stop, don't stop, don't stop.

if you don't see me, i'm not real,

it won't be real.

take your eyes off

and take "me" away.

dig my nails

into my arm

drag them down slowly

peeling behind their trails

strips of blank

yellowed gray

faded, faded

and pouring red

all i feel is

raw linoleum

the background radiation

of my own pervasive misery

touches every corner

of my universe.

the suffering continues.

it always does.

in the grasp of night

wretched and sinful

golden bright desire

to new heights you twist

inside my gut.

i beg for red, red, red.

slip in flood slipping in

quicksilver fish flash by

and somewhere

an eagle takes flight.

stitching this body together is probably not enough. are you falling apart too? frantic pulls of bloody thread, the fear of stopping, the determination to win over dark matter voices. desperately i yank the thread through another weeping hole in my edges. i don’t want to be in pieces. i can’t risk them seeing me that way. they want a perfect portrait, they “just want me to be happy”. do body pieces feel happiness? are you happy?

each pulls on its anchors, and i yank the corset together. keep those organs in, glue down that peeling paint, hold hold holdholdholdholdholdhold. i don’t think it’s enough, i can’t hold back this force, it’s only so long before it all flies apart. will i go supernova or just die like a red dwarf? if i’m burning out, am i just paper or is there dynamite at the end? am i a candle or a firework? neither, i know i’m just a body in the end. well, in the real end i’ll just be…. quark soup. completely dissociated.

i cannot hold back the force of rejection.