scattered poems; an archive of my humiliation

i say here what i can’t say to them

[hisnameisred]

it’s getting to the begging hours of the night.  the time when eyes begin closing  and i start speaking louder,  shaking people:  look at me! look at me, please! don’t you understand i’m suffering? don’t you see it? don’t you think if i could tell you i would say something? i can’t speak, so you must. touch my chest and feel the cavity. put your fingers into my wound. don’t you feel all that blood? all this time i’ve been hurting and i haven’t been able to breathe a word. it’s like poison, this silence. please! please! please! if i knew what to ask for, i would ask for it.

[hisnameisred]

when i was a child,  i walked as silently as i could.  all the time  light-footed, cautious, quiet.  i used to scare my mother by appearing behind her.  ‘you’re like a ghost.’  where did i learn that? 

this summer when i came home  i sat on the couch past my old bedtime,  late into the dark night.  when i looked up,  my little sister was in front of me.  somehow, she’d crept downstairs without my noticing, silent as a ghost. 

[hisnameisred]

where is the line between wanting you and wanting your body? at the cross of your tongue and my teeth? is it betwen the epidermis and the blood? show it to me, and i'll cut myself free.

[hisnameisred]

I HAVE A SICKNESS LIKE FLESH HAS BLOOD IT'S GOING TO KILL ME, THIS CRAVING: I WISH YOUR BODY WAS MINE. I WISH MY BODY WAS YOURS. I WILL CUT US BOTH UP FOR THIS

[hisnameisred]

hyancithus i am absurd with large hands that knock and drag and wince and wait at the threshold of your palms like a bride waiting to be wanted i do not beg; it is my fingers, my knees, my ribs which beg that they would touch the tips of your fingers with my own

[hisnameisred]

you carved our initials into the bench where we smoked, scratched them out with a quarter, big, child-like letters, spaced out like it was marking out seats, here’s S for mine, here’s R for yours. it was our last smoke the night you left, when i stayed up with you until your ride came in the early morning, and we killed time wandering the dark woods and the eerie, ever-illuminated dorm hall. you didn’t know if the marks would stay, but the next night, i went out—drunk, already missing you—and dug them deeper with a knife. here’s R for me, here’s S for you. i scratched them out and hurried back through the black woods, stumbling paranoid like something was coming after me.

[hisnameisred]

breathe in, breathe out— that’s how we saved smoke, leaning in and passing it from mouth to mouth. breathe in, breathe out— that's how I saved face, leaning back and exhaling you from my teeth

[hisnameisred]

one for april— the night you kissed him for the first time, i spilled a rum & coke on your carpet. i scrubbed at it, but it was as hopeless as trying to scrub the blood from my flesh.