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Little one, just ten, you are too young
to sashay about the way you do,
wearing tight shirts and shaving “down there”
because someone once told you
it was the right thing to do.
You talk about sex and then ask for a bedtime story
like there’s nothing in-between.
So much has been taken from you.

You only fit into yourself
when you come out to use the bathroom at night,
hair mussed, squinting in the hall light
and not bothering to smile. At night I see
the scared little thing you really are.

Come back, little one.
Dance one more time with your eyes closed, arms floating,
feet planted firmly on the ground.
Dance like a tree
still young enough to be called a sapling.

Come back, little one.
Let yourself be a child
just one more time.

Pressed

I am roadkill
just enough fur in the mess of bone and flesh
to guess what I might have been

all my limbs are in the wrong places
insides squished out
mangled and rotting

I am roadkill
flattened
only a reminder of what might have been

all my insides are in the wrong places
how can you look at me
how can you look at me

Brake

The last thing I remember
is the surprise in his bright blue eyes
as I came around the corner, before my own screams
took over the world, and I told myself
that the bumps and snapping under my tires
were bicycle
and not bones.

Tanning

Yesterday on TV
they covered a man
with gold latex paint.

When he peeled it off it tore like skin
and underneath
everything was red and warm.

I rip dead skin from a burn
but it is pink and shiny as raw meat.
Anything it touches
feels cold.

He discovered life and heat.
I found nothing but pale outlines
of old scars that cannot be burned away.
I have nothing good underneath.

I wish
I could skin myself
into newness.

Freedom

There’s nothing I want more than a good, drenching, delicious roll around
in my own insanity. It’s always there, hiding,
pooled in the back of my skull like butter, but for eight years
I’ve kept it from slipping out. Bursting, really.
Exploding. From eyes, nostrils, the seams of fingernails.
Spurting from my mouth and ears.
Something thick and warm, something that sticks in the pores.
Sometimes I almost let myself touch it, let my brain bump up against it,
sometimes it sticks and I can’t move for an hour, two, three.
Sometimes it seeps down my spinal column, oozes through my lungs,
and settles in my chest, and that’s hardest, keeping it there,
when all it wants to do is bust out, yellow like butter and thick as honey,
so I can roll in it, bathe in it,
smear it on my arms, on my face, and then at last
I will be free. My skin will split and let me out
and I won’t be fighting anymore, trying to keep all that crazy inside,
trying to keep that crazy from cracking my ribs open, smashing through my skull,
trying to keep that crazy from clawing its way out.
I’ll roll in it, rub it in, and everyone will know.
They’ll see me, dripping and wild, nothing left behind the eyes.
They’ll smell it on me; turn away.
They’ll hear my screams, the voices in my head using my mouth.
And at last, at last, at last,
I won’t give a fuck.