Burn me like a witch.

Melt my skin.

Engulf me in flames of certainty.

I’d far prefer that to the bleak reality

that I have been imprisoned

in a perpetual house fire that will forever blaze around me,

but refuse to steal the breath from my lungs

and drown me in a cloud of smoke.

I see your smoldering hands begging to

wrap my throat and finish me off

but you are only a coward

who derives his power from harsh words.

Must I tie myself to the stake?

new life form swelling,

an abdomen filling with

something near poison.

light is violent to

such sheltered eyes and pale skin

wishing for blindness.

this is why we cry,

at first breath of air, callous

thickens in our throat.

it covers every

tender inch of us until

there is nothing felt.

mercy may take the

shape of a death before life's

allowed to begin.

She is yet to rise.

I enter, late afternoon

to find a still chest.

........

ignore this i needed 15 words to enter

It's cold outside.

I'm turning nine and

the air is too still for even dull breath, but

I manage to slice my throat on ice shards as I scream.

We have no time here,

not for winter,

not anymore.

There is no ice,

only February

(every year it's warmer.)

White dust is falling,

settling upon my scalp.

The ceiling plaster crumbles beneath violent feet and

I'm about 11 and by now I know:

the snow never makes it

to the ground.

only I do.

I've learned to walk on my hands.

My blistering feet stain the hardwood.

Smoke rises

and I have grown tired of

charring my shoes on the floor.

At recess the air's a bit cooler,

farther away from the iron hearth.

Not everyone's world is on fire but the flames never seem

to leave me for long.

All the wood chips are damp with melted snow

and I want someone to chase me.

I terrorize boys;

take their sneakers from their feet.

They don't care about me, but I

am smart enough to know by now:

leverage is required to get what you need.

There is a gaping hole in my gut,

my father left it there,

it's on the brink of caving in and I

do not have enough flesh to fill it.

Please, lend me yours.

I beg.

I need them to know

that I

am something to be desired.

I need them to want

to pour themselves into me to

save my collapsing self.

God knows I alone,

am not enough.

Ice melts to glass now

distilling in my throat

and its sharp edges

(as opposed to another's flesh)

have filled the aching void

behind my ribs.

It all comes crawling

back up my esophagus as I force

the weight to peel off my skin.

Can I make them want me if I shrink

small enough to be a child?

I sink my body in the muddy ground and pray it freezes over

but the angels went extinct with the snow and

I continue to grow older.

The only regret I have at this point is that I am alive,

how could I feel any disdain for the ambrosia that

made me my own god.

I said being drunk was as close to being dead as I could get

and I meant it

and it was glorious.

There is bile crusting my carpet

I could never be bothered to clean and it has

eaten through my floor like

the booze through my liver.

I wish my liver had failed faster than the floorboards,

I wish I kept my acid in my gut

but I burned a hole through my facade.

You sent me away

and locked the liquor up.

The sober set into my veins like lead,

the poison didn't leave my blood for months.

Vision finally clear

the regret hits like shards of amber glass.

At this point in my life I have come to believe that

hands are evil.

Fingers have forced themselves around my throat and

It has been 7 years --

but I still feel as if I'm choking.

When you cannot breathe, the air is a prison.

I cut gills into my flesh but all they did was bleed and

liquor felt like oxygen but really

It was drowning me.

My hands are no exception,

you can see it all over my skin.

His hands pushed me to the streets but

my hands took the world into themselves

and brought me down.

I had a world inside my head,

always have,

and I remember,

as a child, I sought vengeance for the fire.

Of course one man did not light this fire,

one soul was not at fault and

nonetheless --

my small hands wanted blood.

The world is burning

and in my young mind,

she alone set it ablaze.

I made her mirage bleed flame colored.

I will not lie,

I have seen every film written and produced by Quentin Tarantino,

and still I have trouble emulating others' art.

I had to ask my father.

He said "violence and humor, centered in dialog."

I think this memory all of these things.

I was three, or five, i'm not quite sure,

time has always been a jumble.

And I had conversations with myself,

I was two people,

and one embodied everything my young mind deemed evil.

We fought,

I won,

or perhaps lost.

It was all in my head after all.

When you get sick your world gets small

like lungs coated in tar.

I was sick long enough for my whole universe to fit in my palm.

Then it became the size of a person

and soon enough I could fit inside it with him,

my everything.

Together we became the world.

We grew,

filling our flesh out

like balloons just large enough not to

burst.

And soon we realized that air could exist around us as well,

that we did not have to be black holes,

we did not have to live in a vacuum.

Now the air touches the dirt

the trees, the grass, the sky, the sun

and all the color in the world.

I breathe it all in and I have begun to find

so much joy, in all the little things.

Quite simply, my everything is

everything.

was moments from being

as limbs flailed and

ants fought with my skin like each other.

Dying to be less than they were,

starving for the moisture pooling in my pores.

I pray I will never be enough to satiate them all.

They haven't left me,

the ants, they still swarm.

I see black liquid drip down the needle to

my shriveled hand,

veins have all run dry and little legs

crawl like pins where the blood should have been.

but finally the dark void parts for the plaster,

a white almost bright enough to blind

I narrowly escaped a nothingness that I still long to find.

that blast the brain out of my head like a rocket

from the launchpad sitting in my skull,

to a time warp far from the confines of this house

where I can blissfully float between stars,

suspending consciousness

to create a mind as empty as its surroundings:

this vacuum that reeks of moonshine,

full of silence that bends sound like water.

What happens to a human body in the emptiness of space?

Frost coats my eyes,

this cosmic poison seeps into my liver.

My body implodes.

As my heart contracts, it caves inwards,

sucks plasma from my veins,

bursts blood cells,

unravels intestines.

Collapsing lungs force a sharp exhale from my icy blue lips,

and the remnants of my body,

not built to float in the contents of those glass bottles in which

dwelled galaxies,

dissipate into

my bedroom floor.