beacon

i loved a man once who surely thanked me for spending time with him after every meeting, at least in the early days. the ones before he stopped holding my hand on the subway, before he turned out the lights before moving within me so he could pretend someone else hovered above him like the angel on high. i tried to starve my bones enough to slip into his pocket, to sleep on his nail beds, to be compact enough to squeeze back into his heart. to take up such little space, it required no effort to be held or loved. but there’s no amount of food you can uneat to matter to someone you don’t. that thumbs touching around thigh, around waist, won’t make them hold onto you any tighter. just makes you better at slipping through their noose to your own demise. i couldn’t unsay the words that had already been said, couldn’t unwrite what i’d written, couldn’t unscream what i’d already roared, already wailed, already puked & flushed. i only know how to love myself til the brink of suicide. of erasure & apocalypse. make my mouth into a bunker, my brain into trenches. i thank everyone who sacrifices themselves to spend time with me now, knowing i cannot repay the debt i owe. knowing my presence is a curse, a shower drain, a decaying sewer system. i’m sorry. that i never learned to detach my burdensome. to disrupt the electric shock i possess that first resuscitates, then fries the eyes black. i’d like to say that the home cooked meals have me arisen from the profound void of an empty stomach, but i’m still starving, still aching. i shovel dinner rolls down my throat just to feel the comfort of bloated stomach pressed against jeans as if i’m being held tightly, closely. the profound void lives in me, unable to be satiated by the calories, the cum, the crucifix. i’m lost in a cycle of asking what i need, of begging to be seen, of desperately clinging to my rib cage so i don’t drop into the violent vacancy that swells inside me like the rip tide. desire is a monster & i want the monster turned on me instead of weeping & reaping his way through my blood stream. christ, what have i become? (what i’ve always been). a creature of debilitating imagination & overly sensitive skin cells & shifts of hair that are now turning silver more rapidly than i can do my laundry. youth was never meant to last, but god, i never felt young. i’ve been the person i wanted to be & lost her to a city that was never meant to be mine. cannot plant my roots in concrete, too delicate too wispy. i am translucent in the right lighting. & i miss my high school auditorium & st. george’s gardens & lake paradox & the lighthouse—the lighthouse—it’s always the lighthouse, i’m still staring up at that lighthouse wishing the beacon inside me would alight so i could find my way home.  i am so grateful, so shameful, so indebted to this world, these humans who have loved me no matter how briefly, fleetingly. i raised butterflies once & let them go. i let them go & it was okay. i let them go, i let them go, i let them go. but i always come back to me.