Home is no innocent pastime.
A snuff-stuffed brain chokes
on its own swollen gums:
nothing about this is healthy
except the planet’s veins,
apparently.

The pipe-smoking magicians,
armed with real sorcery this time,
continue to type and do yoga.
All an excessive poetry.
A spillage of radiant limbs.
Somewhere, an exquisite piece
of pottery. Meanwhile,
I cut my pigtails off. 

Hair doesn’t look as vicious and maniacal
gathered in bunches and
severed. I search for clarity
in the awful folds of my flesh
and when I come up for air

there is only the perfume of my pillow.

I am begging for my ribs to
crack open. Snap fizz like a
cold beer, with the heft they deserve.
So nothing. So complacence
and a spoiled toddler.

Or I would like to eat myself.
Fingers first and tongue last.
I wonder if I could still sit
dying by the toilet. Watch as
pale remains wash away, float
Home.

At home I’m comfortable—
not much cotton candy
to spin for the chemical crowd.
A room to keep like the
afterthought
of an Oklahoma rodeo.
I will get out of here tomorrow.
Tomorrow. So I need my bed
to make up its mind immediately:
loyal lover or begrudging clerk.
Keep me forever or sparingly.

I’ve had no struggle to lord over
my body so of course there is
no art here,
no alteration in the third degree,
no burns of the first;

only the perfume of my pillow. 

I had a nightmare—a
blank diagnosis dancing the
foxtrot and the yellow laughing man
lying prostrate on my desk.
A relatable villain.
I want to eat nothing
but this dream, myself, and yesterday.
I turn and put away three dinners. 

The internet needs to make up its mind.
Either I’m beautiful or pathetic.

Tell me again to take a deep breath.
Tell me again to lift myself up.
Teach me a grounding exercise
and tell me to love myself.
Well, sweetie, I can love and love garbage
onto the marble countertop,
I suppose,
when you’re done talking. 

The perfume of my pillow.

The sheets are so comfortable
I lose all feeling in my limbs.
I’m trying to mimic something here.
Teach me this tableau.
Melatonin might. 

Molt! Molt! The magicians shriek
and continue shedding into
softer skin. I cackle in reverse;
scatter cryptic diamonds into a still bath
because this is all I can manage.
Sink or float.
This is all I can afford to tell.
Here are my scabby palms.
Here are my drowning eyes.
Here are someone’s pigtails.
Let on any more and I—

My pillow. 

I would call my soul cavernous
except I lack the lung space.
So I close up the haunting taunting
janitorial crevice
and return Home. 

In no one else’s memory
a flickering friend asked me
to just let her die.
Just let me die.
Something smells sweet.
Home cooking.