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I can not see the moon and I want to be dead (someone else) Not so that I could see the moon, but so that I would be someone else (someone else’s body) And maybe he could see the moon.

“Do you miss it?” Casper asked. I turned my attention away from the TV to look at him. Casper continued to stare at the random time travel show we found as if his question was an afterthought, “Do I miss what?” I replied. I looked down at the bowl of cheddar popcorn to see it was half empty. I poured some more in. “Your home. The past, everything, I don’t know,” he said with a sort of forced nonchalance. He turned to stare right at me, his eyes not quite burning with curiosity but hard and glinting like they were when he was serious. I looked at him for a few moments longer before turning away, leaning into the couch, and staring blankly at the TV. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about that house. That battered white house that was surrounded by carefully maintained flowers all around the exterior. The window screens were torn from hail and rose thorns. It stood in a field, a lone pantheon of humanity, with the nearest house a mile-long grass path away. My toes curl at the memory of cold grass, soft from how often it was walked over, brushing the soles of my feet. I would stain the carpet when I came home, adding the only color to a dull house, walls painted an unimaginative shade of off-white. Even my room, filled rebelliously with anything I could find, broken ceramic dolls, leaves from the forest, and gifts from my friends, couldn’t escape this fate of white walls. That perfectly lived in white house, haunted by a living ghost and inhabited by half-alive people. It was quiet and it wasn’t happy. The furniture I recall was just as lifeless. The cool grey of the kitchen, the mahogany side tables, and la-z boys in cream. An once pure white couch tainted off-white with how much I ate there when I wasn’t supposed to. I stare at my cheddar-covered fingers. I press them onto the sofa, leaving cheesy stains. When was the last time I called my mom? “More than you’ll ever know.”

“How is your body doing?” It took May a long time to answer. His feet, hands, tips of his bent ears and nose had been numb since he first pushed himself off the damp ground that morning. But in some soft place deep inside him, his guts cramped around hot new life. “It’s good to be full,” he said. Bex felt her own stomach inflame to enclose the precious bits–thread root, stem strings, heads of mushrooms, tufts of seeds. The field was a fairy ring closed in from the roaming dogs by towering petals made of worn stone the color of good soil (or so one of Bex’s aunts had once said.) The same color as the eyes she held wide to take in the parts of the bounty her stretched belly couldn’t yet. Despite all the newfound rest, she still could not feel her bloody feet, her hands with skin swelled by sun and joints fixed by cold. She watched the beads of pollen drift past, coloring even the quiet sky with the fluorescent green-orange-yellow of new growth. The sea of grass moved with the wind too, enough amber-colored fiber for 10,000 new shoes. On either side of her hips, blossoming from the earth; like milk teeth, morning wood, blisters, rising all around and spreading their own powdery life. She watched families of little shining things racing about, collecting the mushrooms’ offerings on the fine down covering their gloriously round bodies. Bex slept like the ground that night, dreaming of newly woven baskets overflowing with dried stock foods, a lifetime of root broth cooked in her own windproof home by a clear stream. She awoke under her stone awning to her heart pounding from her ears to her cracked fingertips. Her goddamn incompetent companion now a baby grub curled in his own earthen crib, snoring in the pink-blue light of dawn. Over the next week their stomachs stretched enough to be hungry. One day they realized that they hadn’t replaced sleep with worry in many nights, now they had long uninterrupted unconsciousness filled with dreams they no longer cared to put words to. And anyway, their attempts failed to pass their ever-drier lips and painlessly rotting teeth. May and Bex stumbled hand in hand through the glowing meadow that rose to meet their feet and sank to cradle them when they dropped. They were resplendent now in found treasures, their eyes echoed in a ring of empty sockets so they would never have to stop looking at the joy of it all. May laughed his first belly laugh and choke-screamed to Bex: “‘’mpollenting!” And he was, his own specks of sunlight drifted on the breeze. The shell of scars that he had once needed was no more–could return as payment to this perfect place. Bex giggled as she saw that she too was vulnerable–the first time, the first time! Years of wrinkles floating away on the breath of the field.

You & I are covered by blankets In nothing but our underwear My head is on your chest Your face is buried in my hair Whispering sweet nothings in my ear And even amongst the storm outside Everything seems so clear

You’ve chased something away inside of me, that used to live here. So this is what I meant when I said, the broomstick was the size of a dog, because it was: I caught it on camera, Scene One: my heart goes round the farm like a chicken without a head. And you’re a kid and you’re chasing it. (Direction…………………notes: one of you please go faster) It goes round and round, and you’re getting blood on your little hands and you’re getting blood on your little knees (Direction…………………notes: eat shit) (Aside) How is your day? How is it going? (moving along, etc) xxxxx: Oh, it’s alright. Just a lot of running around. Cut back to the chicken inside of me. Cut to my face. I break into a smile, Cut to the sky. The sky breaks into a sunset. (Direction…………………notes: you’re very kind, I’m sorry about all this) (Soliloquy) I’m reaching toward something nameless: my arms the size of dogs, dogs the size of broomsticks, broomsticks the size of your shadow. And you were right, it doesn’t really matter. But I said that first. I’m stretching out towards the pointless things. Boxes outside the doorway. Cigarette ash on your suitcase. A car ride forgotten about in a week. In a week: your face setting on the hills. I try to imagine the field from your perspective: cut to black. If hurricanes were named. If only they were named. We’d come up with better reasons for these things. I could make everyone less uncomfortable. I’m posing for you for the last time one hundred times. Cut to my arms the size of your shadow. Cut to something nameless. Cut to my middle name, my first name, seven cigarettes lined up like broomsticks, I could sweep the whole world with these, I could push the farmland out of frame. Except the chicken, that can stay.

A soul can get stuck walking up and down the stairs of an old house. Sometimes you will feel like you are squeezing past someone who is not there. A soul might get stuck in the car radio, nailing up its eternal hammock between NPR and the classical music station. A soul gets stuck between your teeth every time you eat cabbage and kielbasa. A soul is the heat wrapped around the wheels of a red wagon racing down a hill. What we often mistake as the murmuring clouds of cataracts is actually a soul stuck in the blind eyes of an old dog. A soul can get stuck in the mouth-shaped hollow of a tree. A soul might get caught in the drain of a clawfoot bathtub. A soul can become the color of a too dark lipstick at the bottom of your purse. A soul can be the feeling of your body in the ocean as you are falling asleep after a day at Virginia Beach, or the sound of the ocean bouncing in the fleshy, pink insides of a conch shell. The smoothness from many hands touching the same spot on a brass statue is also a caught soul. A soul can be an accidental fingerprint visible on the scotch tape hanging a photo to the wall. A soul can get trapped in the voice of your mother as you half-sleep in the backseat

Yesterday, I was talking to Ellie about how I wish I could be prettier. A vain thing to say, in a way, but I’ve always felt ugly. Even as a child, I thought my face was too long, my nose not small or cute enough. “I want to be a Bishounen”, I said. “But you already are one”, Ellie said. The other nonbinary people who I see walking around the school sort of look the same. Not to make a generalization– there are lots of people who look and dress rather ‘normal’, or even in a masculine way. However, a great deal of the nonbinary people (theyfabs, as Ellie would say) are beautiful, and in addition to this, dress and look extremely femme. Not feminine in a traditional sense; I mean, none of them could be pretty cheerleaders from high school. But they all have dyed hair, short or long, and style it intensely. Their makeup skills are exquisite– glamorous tiktok eyeshadow, cat- or fox-style winged eyeliner, false lashes. Brilliant colors in their clothes. They wear skirts, low cut shirts and tops, earrings. Next to them, I look like a dark greenish-brown smudge. I almost never wear makeup these days. All my clothes have been chosen because they’re comfortable. Ellie said, “Maybe you feel ugly because you dress like a skater boy. You wear baggy, drab clothes. You could change your hairstyle, and ways of dress, and be prettier.” I sensed that she was right, but I don’t feel like squeezing into corsets, and I feel uncomfortable in skirts. It’s perfectly fine for the other people who want to do this, because it’s their presentation. But I really can’t bring myself to dress like them. Am I nonbinary because I was an ugly woman, or am I ugly because I’m nonbinary? He only wanted to love girls. In my jealousy, desperation, I kept comparing myself to the pretty girls he would date. I met his ex once– she came to visit him. I was so surprised to see her that all I remember of her was that her hair was green, and she was really short. He told me about another girl, too– his best fuck. He said she ghosted him. I confessed that the best sex I ever had was with him. I didn’t mean much to him– not what he meant to me. I knew he wished I had a dick. He said it himself, multiple times. I don’t think I understood how fucked up that was, until we parted ways. When we were in bed, and he would say that, I would just laugh and say, “me too”, or maybe even self-fetishize– “if I had a dick, I would be so deep in you right now”. It hurt but I tried not to show it. I’ve tried for so long to accept the body I am in– a weird woman’s body, androgynous breasts, no pussy hole to speak of. Severe vaginismus. He didn’t want to get close. He said, “sometimes one just isn’t in the mood to eat pussy. Like you said, about sucking dick.” I said, “But I said that, and I’ve sucked your dick countless times. You haven’t eaten me out once.” What even was I to him? In reality, I wasn’t even his first or second choice, in terms of gender identity. Undesirable, unwanted, a bit useless, even. He couldn’t enter me, even though we tried– my vagina muscles were too tight, they wouldn’t let him in. A blank space where my pussy should’ve been, like a mannequin. If a beautiful trans woman came along, or a hot cis man, he would be done with me. A reality that I didn’t want to accept. Not man enough to be fucked, not woman enough to be loved. Love is so bizarre. It strikes you, suddenly. That this strange man you’ve been casually hooking up with is someone who you feel like you couldn’t live without. We looked at ourselves in the mirror. We looked good together– no, it wasn’t that. We looked more beautiful as individuals when we were holding each other.

The worst day was when the IUs were distributed through the underground market, but we didn’t know it yet. They were dropped on every front door of every street, enclosed in an unmarked silver box. In a world where nothing was free, finally something was. From that moment, there was never any silence. You could accidentally catch someone concentrating on a last-minute grocery list, intrude on a secret you weren’t supposed to know, catch glimpses of your sleeping neighbor’s dreams leaking through a shared wall. Sitting at the nape of our necks, they seemed as impermanent as hair clips. We all thought you could just take the damn things off. For a while, rich with the desire of knowing, nobody wanted to. Eventually, when the IU’s transmissions fused with sound frequencies in the air, nobody could, unless you wanted your brain to short circuit. Last night, the grocery store was bombed, and for a moment I thought there was silence. I looked out the window, through a slit in the blinds. Across the street there were flames. Looking back into my apartment, the room lit up and flickered. The silence did not last for very long, but I swear I heard it.

Now that the light is fad i n g the south stares from across the earth. The north has already been d r a w n of its color. As I go further d o w n, so does the sun. Dark digeststhesky slowly though the glowing, red eyes have begun their vigilant heaving breaths. His tongue s lits through my focus. I have wandered into his domain to relieve myself of his shadowy conceit. He asks me to concede my arcane revelations. Words meander around who are and core. Let go. I tell him if he knows then there is no need to ask; won’t let him coax me to the garden. (they warned of his silvery delusions. should’ve known better than to entertain the nefarious.) He brands a smile Glazes talk of who and why and a spider and a fly Shoulder off fragility; tongue suspended. (you never gave me a reason to believe. that’s why i pity you. you pilfer wool to sew into your sight. smear fool’s gold against your speech. all for an edged ego. so desperate to hold a bit of humanity. you’re not privy to that. you must prey in order to procure some company. i’ve danced in your babled arithmetic far too long. my soles will no longer engage in your invective gambol.) I never emitted those lyrics. It wasn’t necessary. He caught them inside and they circled in pride. Marked his exterior with a slight grimace. A commencement of deliverance.

★★★★★ I AM VERY HAPPY WITH MY PURCHASE By PAT on July 31, 2016 Verified Purchase Color: Lime Glitter I AM VERY HAPPY WITH MY PURCHASE. I WILL PURCHASE FROM THIS SELLER AGAIN IN THE FUTURE. HOWEVER, MY ONLY COMPLAINT IS THAT I WANT TO PURCHASE THE LIME/GOLD/PURPLE ROPE, BUT IT IS ONLY SOLD AT 640 FEET. I WOULD PURCHASE 10, 20, OR 30 FEET OF IT BUT NOT 640 FEET. One person found this helpful When his dark iPhone screen was illuminated by a notification from Amazon saying that his shipment had arrived, the grey cloud that had been darkening his day had finally lifted. Pat was on his way back from a job fair, one specifically geared towards people looking for careers involving a great number of fibers in close proximity, such as ropery and I suppose carpetry and a few of the less important fiberist fields such as clothingery and blanketry, that consumed roughly half of the local convention center. He left before he could make an impression. Even though Pat’s love of fibers would undoubtedly be considered one of his defining traits just – ask his friends – the loud chatter and perpetual standingness that always comes with a half packed convention center proved to be too much for him. 2016 had been a tough year for Pat, with the loss of his father in a carpet factory fire that only received what little news coverage it did because of the room for headline potential – e.g. “RUG BURN KILLS 12” – and the subsequent loss of his sales job at Barry’s Discount Carpets after the titular Barry was forced to make layoffs following the sharp decline of public trust in rugs due to aforementioned fire. Pat knew the blame actually fell on the poorly maintained factory equipment, not the rugs themselves, but with the size of the factory equipment lobby and the disorganized state of the carpet lobby, Washington would never let the people know the truth. After that whole one-two punch his soon-to-be wife-to-was began the lengthy process of leaving him because of the depressive slide down which Pat had begun ever since the multitude of tragedies and the inaction of those folks in Washington, choosing to slowly peel the band-aid off with a trial separation “for the good of our marriage” instead of just ripping it off with a divorce. All in all he’d had a pretty bad year. That’s what he told his new therapist. In turn his new therapist, who Pat liked a lot better than the old one, told him to look forward to the small stuff. That was precisely what Pat had chosen to do. With this notification he could now start looking forward to said small stuff - like the gift to himself that will be at his doorstep when he gets home - a length of rope of the highest quality, bright green with a tinge of gold and purple fiber woven throughout its body. Pat believed rope to be the greatest gift in the world, the ultimate in mankind’s achievements, ranking it above the internet, the car muffler, and even the Saturn V rocket in a list of “Top 10 Achievements of Mankind, Number 1 Will Shock You” - admiring it for its unique ability to both hang and pull, along with various combinations and variations of the two. He always had a passion for rope, even as a little boy. In fact long ago, before he was yanked into the world of carpet based commerce by his late father (who admired carpet’s unique ability to both warm an otherwise cold floor and enhance the aesthetic appeal of a room if it’s a good one) he had hoped to maybe start a boutique ropery with his eventual wife-to-be, but life gets the best of us all. So even though it was a simple thing to look forward to, he knew it to be so - after all what more is a rope than a collection of fibers tangled up and working together to make one stronger fiber. It reminded him of a better more hopeful time, a time where he could maybe have a wife-to-be and a boutique ropery, not the looming presence of a wife-to-was and the stench of unemployment, and like his therapist said: simple things. So when Pat finally got home, he had no fiberist career in hand, instead possessing the joy of a child on the day after Christmas when the relatives who couldn’t make it to Christmas come and they give better gifts than the relatives who come on Christmas. These kinds of conventions usually put a damper on his mood, as he always had hope that he could to land a job somewhere in the rope business or at the very least string - string wouldn’t be such a bad gig - but never could given the notorious insular attitude most fiberist carry - usually choosing to hire young blood or from within their respective field, not washed up carpeters. He ran out of his car to the front porch and tore into the frustrating packaging and there it was. The rope. So much rope. Foot upon foot upon foot of bright green, purple, and gold fibers working together. The rope went on and on, seemingly endless. Pat was confused. While normally extremely precise when placing orders online, but oh how rope makes him so reckless, he had failed to realize 640 feet of the rope was the only length available. He started pulling at the end of the rope, tossing the slack behind him. How could so much rope fit inside such a small container, Pat thought to himself. Such is rope. He kept on pulling and pulling until all 640 feet were lying in a tangled mess on his front steps. For a brief moment he was mortified. What is a man to do with so much rope? This is enough rope to for a member of the unscrupulous factory equipment lobby to hang themselves with over the shame of causing “RUG BURN KILLS 12” several dozen times over. They would only ever need maybe 20 feet depending on the height of the beam or branch they chose, Pat had already done the math. He kept thinking about the difficulty the guilt-ridden lobbyist would have trying to feed hundreds of feet of rope around their branch or beam. Maybe they could tie it to a post and see if walking forward until there’s no slack left will do the trick. His mind kept circling around these thoughts of a suicidal dedication to suicide, finding it easier to consider them than the sheer quantity of rope that has made its way from some ropery to some warehouse to his feet, that is until he laid his hands on it once more. This was five star rope. More than he bargained for but perfection nonetheless. It felt exactly as rope should, down to the trademark scratchy discomfort. He started to rub it on his face, moaning in ecstasy. He stood up, as he often does when he isn’t standing and wishes to, and took a dive into the large pile of rope, swimming in it as a Scrooge McDuck might with its coin. He was very happy with his purchase, very happy indeed. He will definitely purchase from this seller again in the future.

My feet are swinging up from my chair, out of boredom, and hitting the underbelly of the wooden table. Mama’s sitting down at the dinner table dunking vanilla creme cookies into a mug of hot coffee. She’s only half listening to Auntie, who’s pitting some peaches for a cobbler. That tablecloth, that used to be nice and so clean and white and painted with ribbons and apple orchards, is now splattered and soaked in brown coffee spills and bright orange peach juice. Auntie pries her knife beneath one of the pits and pops it out. It goes flying across the table and hits Mama’s coffee cup with a gentle clink. It rains down on the table cloth a bright orange trail like it was flung across it with a paintbrush. “Now you know,” Auntie starts, with the knife pointed at Mama, “that boy is tellin’ you all kinds of lies. You think he’s doin’ right by God in that trailer park, but I bet you he’s getting into all sorts of trouble.” Mama sighs, “Well, you don’t know he…” Her soft voice trails off. From my spot at the table, I can see her lips move slightly, as if there is still sound coming out, but I can’t hear her over the THWACK of the screen door opening and slamming shut. Before I can see him, I can hear his breathing. I can hear it as he gulps down the sticky Texas heat; I can hear him trying to cram it in his chest. He screams from the living room, “Mama!” I hear the thumping of his boots against the thin wooden floorboards. The sound, which would be booming and vibrating off the walls, is muffled by the layers of mud caked on the bottom of his shoes. “MAMA,” He screams, “Are you here? Mama, can you hear me? Mama! I’m bleedin’!” Auntie’s face twists as if she had just gotten a mouth full of something bitter. The corners of Mama's mouth slide down. Auntie doesn’t set down her knife. She doesn’t miss a beat. She picks up another peach and tosses it up in the air and catches it back in her hand. There is more clunking of muddy boots before he appears in the doorway, leaning his body against the door frame and clutching his arm hard. “Mama,” he exhales, “I got robbed. I wasn’t doin’ anything wrong! I swear! I was just walkin’ home and those boys jumped on me. They made me give them my wallet. Mama, I swear. I’m not lyin’ this time. They really took everything I have. They took my hundred dollars I got from workin’ at the gas station. They took that twenty dollars you gave me for gas. Mama, I swear. They came at me. They tried to stab me in the ribs. I blocked ‘em, but they got me in my arm.. Mama, you gotta stitch me up…” Her eyes don’t even water. She takes a sip of coffee before getting up and pulling out a chair at the table and motioning for him to sit down. He sits. She disappears down the long end of the hallway and turns right into the bathroom. He hollers after her, “I can’t go to a hospital! You know I can’t! They’ll send me right to jail. You know I have warrants out! You know how they are! They won’t give me a chance, Mama. They’ll just beat me down. They’ll beat me down while I’m bleedin’ all over myself. You know they won’t listen! They’ll think it’s my fault,” he breathes in hard from all the hurt. Auntie wipes her knife clean on the tablecloth before pushing the blade through the skin of another peach. He starts again, “I know you don’t believe me, but I didn’t do anything to piss them off. I wasn’t selling them drugs or anything. I haven’t been doing anything but going to work and comin’ home and goin’ to bed. I swear on my life! I swear it on your grave! It wasn’t worth nothin’ either. I finally get it right, and this is the shit I get! I WASN’T DOIN’ ANYTHING! I worked hard for that goddamn cash, and now, it’s just gone. I’m not sure how I’m gonna pay my bills this month! God Damnit! Fuck them! I swear to God, Mama, I’m gonna fuck ‘em up. I’m gonna fuck ‘em up so bad for this. Those sonsabitches are gonna regret that they ever touched me! I’m gonna kill ‘em! Mama, I needed that money… You gotta help me out. You don’t gotta give me much, just enough to scrape by… I can’t get kicked out. I’ll have nowhere to go. You know I’ll be out on the street. Mama, you hear that Mama? Mama! Mama…MAMA?!” He leans back waiting for her to respond, but the only thing anyone can hear is the sounds of her rummaging through a cabinet of plastic bottles under the sink. I rest my head on the table cloth. My nostrils are overwhelmed with the smell of coffee from a stain right by my nose. I watch as cherry red blood drips down my brother’s arm, makes a little puddle at his elbow, and seeps into the threads of the tablecloth. From the green rimmed clock hanging crooked on the wall, a mourning dove sings to me. It’s last tweet echoes into the emptiness. I close my eyes. Another pit plops out of the peach in Aunties hand. My brother shifts uncomfortably in the wooden chair and his shoes hit the floor. I open my eyes to the sound of Mamma’s bare feet sticking to the linoleum of the kitchen. There’s a click click click before a burst of flame erupts from the stove. She sticks a sewing needle under the flame until it glows red hot. My brother shrieks, “What the fuck is that for?!” I can see him begin to shake and sweat like a kid who knows he’s about to get a shot. “Took me a while to find all this shit,” Mamma says calmly, as she sets a basket down on the table. She twists the lid off a brown bottle and peels off the plastic tab before screwing it back on. She looks at him sternly in the eyes, “Let me see your arm.” “No, just give me the shit and I’ll do it myself. I don’t need your help.” “Yes, you do! Now give me your damn arm!” “No! Don’t you fucking touch it!” “Don’t you dare say that to me! Give me your arm before I pop you in the mouth!” “I SAID NO!” She grabs his arm right under the cut and squeezes it. He yelps and flies back, reeling in pain. His arm is now free, and Mamma holds it gently as she pops open the lid of the brown bottle with her teeth and pours it on the wound. She pours the whole bottle on it and shakes loose the last drops. The second it hits his skin, it makes a noise like bread crumbs falling into a vat of hot oil. This grabs my attention. I crane my neck over Mamma’s shoulder to see what it looks like. The wound is deep. It is a slit down his bicep that’s a little over a half inch deep and four inches long. It slices right through his scary clown tattoo that I’ve always hated. The edges of his flesh look as though pressure from beneath had popped it open. I expect to see bones or strings of muscle where his skin should be, but instead, it is just pink, like a pork chop before it’s cooked. Around the edges of the cut there are white chunks of the liquid, still bubbling and eating away at the bacteria. The cherry red blood looks more pinkish now. It’s kind of the color of melted strawberry ice cream running like rivers down his arm. I take a deep breath in and look away, and Mama threads the needle. Auntie twists open another peach, and it squirts out more juice onto the table cloth. I feel like I’m going to be sick. I hold my breath for a long time before saying anything. “A-are you gonna be alright,” I stutter. As the needle goes into his skin, he lets out a deep, guttural scream of pain. I press my face into the back of Mama’s shirt and grab onto her tightly. I am comforted by the soft feeling of her. Mama ties off the stitches and gently dabs around the cut with a white washcloth soaked in alcohol. She’s careful not to hurt him any more than he’s already hurt. She sets the rag on the table, accidentally creating a strange imprint of pink blood on the tablecloth. “He’s going to be okay,” she tells me, “He’s just gotten himself into a whole mess of trouble.”

concave (v. kon-keyv) 1. to allow myself permission to languish into the cavity of my chest and hide amongst hollow bone. 2. i wonder if i would find myself claustrophobic tucked away in my very own graveyard. would the wind still be able to carve its fingers in my throat and steal the air i thirst for? 3. or would each headstone sunder a new hole into the surface of my forgiveness of you. condone (v. kuh n-dohn) 1. to allow you permission to burn my fingers with the embers of your brown eyes. what is it about the smell of you that makes the hollow appear a naïve solution? 2. you soaked me in the fragility of the glass i carried you on while the birds burrowed in my lungs and kept me from flying. 3. i sunk into the battlefield you felt necessary to glaze across my eyes. 4. i still find myself peeling off a headstone to catch your tears in my casket so that i may drown instead of you. collapse (v. kuh-laps) 1. to allow oneself to contrive a disintegration. 2. a pity so many of us find ourselves renouncing our graves to collect the leaks of your moonlight. did you think i wouldn’t realize the moon bleeds vindication but weeps for absolution from those you blind with your own tears? 3. but i will let myself melt back into my own earth, my tears the only ones that will water my backbone. 4. i will hide amongst the hollow only for my own panic, never again for yours. 5. i will not condone, i will not concave, i will collapse only to ride the wind back to my feet. 6. i will no longer catch your moonlight, or surrender my bed so that you may rest your desperation, because i am no longer a laborer of you. continue (v. kuh n-tin-yoo) 1. to allow someone permission to share the blanket of my skin as they hug my bones. 2. i will find someone to trade my moonlight for theirs while they dig themselves a grave caressing the foot of mine. 3. they will trap my birds in a catacomb labeled now i must breathe. do you want all of your birds back? 4. and will curve my glass into a bed called smile. 5. i am faced with a battlefield they are glazing against my hands so that together we can pick it off of my skin. 6. you have no power here. 7. here, you are the cold embers floating away from my fingertips to rest in someone else’s eyes. 8. i have drained the ink i swallowed from the glass i carried for you. conquer (v. kong-ker) 1. to allow you to lose rather than to submit to the embrace of your harsh comfort. 2. i will cleanse myself of the vinegar of your company. will you too realize you have been sleep walking against hands of those you suffocated with your flaccid words? 3. and watch the dawn hum a melody i record into my tombstone so that even your voice is forgotten. 4. i have won, and damn does it feel like freedom.