the rain clings to your skin as if it is an extension of yourself. your too-heavy feet leave imprints in the mud - they turn red when they think you’re not looking. you do. you are. the woods here are different. the trees have eyes, the branches are arms, leaves - hands. they pick and probe at your skin, scratching off rain until it stings. rooted - that is this feeling. something forbidden, yet sheltered. disposable summers, rendezvous with the ancient alarm clock you had a kid. early morning hours burnt into the backs of your eyelids, alike carving words into the wood. something permanent. something you wish you could erase, but only deepen the cut.
trick yourself into thinking that the moon has started to greet you like an old friend. it’s typical - how the night seems so much like a memory. broad intersections that remind you of how it feels as if to collapse, how the sun hides behind clouds. maybe it’s afraid. maybe it’s smart. maybe they’re the same thing. dreams have always felt like such lonely places. here, the trees have flesh. the hands have mouths. the rain falls from shooting stars, because they always hit the hardest. two years ago, you were all band aids and passenger seats, all wizard cloaks for pretend and candy apples for dinner - wishes half granted with teeth marks embedded into them. and now - now you fear he’ll come back. ghost town populations, reverberations of past haunts like mosquito bites - persistent. rotten. warm, warm that it feels like burning. clock numbers glow from the back of your eyes and you ask - has it always felt like this? has living always felt like almost-dying?
now, you are hungry and ashamed. now, hymns in your head taunting, whispering, saints and gods have come into this world the same way you have — scorch marked and painted in almosts. haunting, like a poem, but : IT’S OKAY IT’S OKAY IT’S OKAY — isn’t it? it has to be. that’s how you get deathless. razors behind your teeth, bloody tongues. boys, on fire, drowning. it can’t have always been this way. you have to believe that. you don’t. your skin catches flame, crime scenes and car rust, maybe you have always been meant to wake up screaming.
the dark room adjusts as if you’d never slept. blink - just to make sure it doesn’t all fade away, then go for the eyes. when stars get too close to black holes, they get ripped apart, you should’ve learned, you should’ve remembered. ❛ sorry. ❜ quiet, eyes half open, heart rapid in the back of your throat. sheets still balled in fists - something to feel, so you won’t fade either. gaze switches : ground hands eyes, ground hands eyes, groundhandseyes. are kind, older - cold in the way the wind sweeps, glassy - almost scared. you know, you know. there are commonalities between you to orbit suns around, and you can’t help but feel g u i l t y - you are not alone, and that is good. the sorrows you share. the secrets you hide. messes tangled and apocalyptic. you are happy and sad at the same time, but at least it is something.
❛ --- yeah, you should be sorry. pretty sure i’m half-deaf now, thanks, ❜ witty, sharp. a cover-up, a facade, a fox-tongue that says: YOU’RE OKAY, I’M HERE. you follow his eyes, his white-bone shrapnel grip, & you know, you know. there’s no fire, but you can smell the s m o k e. nerves remembering his body, hands searching for verisimilitude, fighting to stay still, because if he doesn’t, the room might shift. real might shift. he might shift. oh, you know, you know, & you reach out for him — curl your fingers into his shoulder, hands like tectonic plates, always unsteady, an unreliable stability, but you are still real & you are still ANCHOR. it’s what he needs, what you need: the symbiosis of the exorcised. his dreams are your dream & vice versa. an excerpt, a correlation:
your hands in front of you go unseen. CAN’T COUNT YOUR FINGERS ANYMORE. inverted skies, bloodshot eyes, static in your brain, walking in reverse. the deer don’t sound here. dead animals follow you home. deboning bugs bunny, skinning bambi & his mother in the poppy field. flies in your mouth, locusts in your lungs, embalming, preserving, like baby teeth. the wind is blowing, but the trees are still & the birds are falling. avian flu, avian flu, & it’s an accusation: they’re here because you’re here. you don’t remember coming here. you are not here. you are dead — no, no, you are OUTLIVING yourself. you exist, but who are you? who are we? skin not your own, mouth stuffed with cotton. dead-end forest, doorless doorways, mirror to the left of you, clawing yourself towards it, bear traps on your feet & see? see? even they know, even they know, you delineated junkyard dog, boy behind the monster, boy who leaves claw marks on everything he touches, boy born for them & boy born to die.
looking at your reflection, now. can’t recognize it. nietzsche’s abyss gazes back at you, looks like this is me & this is not me. spitting out them baby teeth, now. smile red like a gash, now. empty spaces in your mouth, now. they’ll fill them, they’ll fill them, going to eat you rare & bloody, going to eat you from gums to guts, going to tear into you & sew you up nice & neat, going to adjust your insides & make themselves a home. here, printed on your ribs: arise, shine, for your light has come --- blessed be the void, blessed be the void, amen. someone call the preacher, remind him to make the sign of the cross when he sees you, shiv his throat when he doesn’t. drink his blood, venerated vintage, distill yourself. these bones are hollowed, never hallowed. everything here is wrong. this is wrong. we are wrong. amen, amen.
he’s too young — little boy lost in the wolven woods, little boy who found out concrete is softer than teeth the hard way. you are tailor & he is torn & you will mend his threadbare spirit, somehow. you’re as twisted as the roots of the tree you died for: help me extricated itself from your vocabulary a long time ago, but you can still help him. hoard all of his shadows. call them your own. consume them. become. ❛ — y’know, you should look into acting. you’d make a great scream queen, ❜ a simper, showing blunt fang, reminding him of your humanity, tethering him back to reality — it’s a lie, though. WOLF-CRY TONGUE, you have no HUMANITY left. but you lie anyway. you have to. a pause, like an apology, & you drop your hand from his shoulder. the symbiosis of the exorcised. he’ll talk about it when he’s ready. you know, you know, you know.
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