Photo by spicykong on Unsplash

Trigger warning: death, murder, depression, grief, loss, drug use, abuse

-—————————————————-

I DIED IN SUMMER

Hot sweat and the acrid smell of cooking meth rising from the basement.
Gritty plastic carpet fibers ground into the back of my arms and the soles of my feet.
Dirty mattress on the living room floor, sheet half on and half off.
Blue or white, it was gray now. Everything is gray now

As I died, I sunk.

Through floor and the basement,
through the cement and the dirt.
Through the fault lines under the earth’s core.

Up above I left my broken heart and spasming lungs.
Up above I left my body and its hungers.
The choices of the living.
The consequences too.

I did not reach for life.
I did not cry my loss.

I will not beg for the chance to be killed again later,
although I got it anyway.

You can not kill the dead.
You can’t starve us or threaten us
or take anything more than we’ve already left.

Joyfully left, somewhere above on a stinking flophouse floor.

-—————————————————-

SOMEWHERE IT IS AUTUMN

And the leaves never fall
and the wind only rustles lightly through the town

There is an empty house
In the middle of a block-long street

Where you are not dead yet
And I get no relief.

-—————————————————-

BLOOD

Sometimes I turn to the you in my head
And, against my better judgement,
I ask

Do you remember
The day with the blood?

You snuck in the back door with the dogs
Covered head to toe in blood
You sobbed loudly
In the shower
Wanting to be caught
Wanting to be witnessed

Turning rusty under the weak spray
Of the handheld showerhead
Wooden walls with cheap plastic curtains
Letter magnets stuck to the cast iron bath

Blood like freckles partly dried on your back

And grandma, upset that you were making a mess.
I’m not cleaning this up for you again.
I was always cleaning things up for you back then.

-—————————————————-

YOU ARE TRAPPED

Violence breaks out in houses sometimes.
Just like earthquakes
Just like spilled milk.

But unlike the milk,
It’s never anyone’s fault
Except that just like the milk,
It’s also always your fault.

You made the milk spill.
You made the violence
shake the house,
crack the walls,
send the footings down the hill.

The house hangs awkwardly now,
Bedroom and bathroom jut into air.

Walk carefully
if you want to feel like
the violence is here
because you are bad.

Walk normally
if you want to feel like
the violence is here because he is bad and you are trapped.

Run and scream and break things if you need to live
fully in the assurance that bad things happen to those who deserve it.