shrine
my aunt died & you fucked me while i cried then left me in the middle of the night & never explained why. it’s an easy rhyme, but no lie in sight. we were so beautiful but i always felt ugly next to you & i scroll through the memories wondering why we both couldn’t see any beauty in me. but the words cut through the smiles & i recall how cockroach, how fester i was under your toes. i would have crawled into your foreskin if you’d asked. it’s a vile image meant to make us all nauseous for a reason. & trust that i could have made it more graphic, more rancid. but i don’t want to slurp the vomit out of the gutters anymore. i want to be loved in the way i wanted you to love me & i want to be left alone in a way you never let me be, even when you’d snap me on your knee & scatter little bits of my shattered bones & raw bitten fingernails all across brooklyn. have you stopped drinking yet? the djs don’t love you, they’re just like the strippers. but i did. foolish as it is. if i close my eyes, i slip into the milk lapping at the sides of the bowl, soggy cereal disintegrating beneath my bottom & i am rotten. dust. quaker oats & shake & bake. & oh i helped. i helped myself. i helped myself to kool aid & barbecue ribs & pitchers of lemonade, just a little bit bitter. it’s a no hitter, but i’m always at bat. strike three baby. well i guess it’s more like infinity. taco bell & burger king crowns. did madrid win? we all know city did. didn’t. was it liverpool this time? there’s so much to say but i’d fall to my knees if ever face to face with the twitch of your full lips & beard & remember when you thought your tooth broke? i have no cavities. even after the cigarettes & the bulimia & forgetting to floss for two years. & JESUS FUCKING CHRIST I WANTED YOU TO LOVE ME. it’s all so stupid in hindsight. so fruitless. so froot loops, shooting hoops, i quit when i was twelve. too short, couldn’t keep up. i was a shooting guard once, but i can’t even protect myself. can’t even load a gun. can’t even sleep peacefully. i wish i wasn’t a pussy. wish i wasn’t the weak spoiled little girl you saw through so easily. could have been a wasp nest. & i’m sorry you hate your mother because i’d saw off my hands if it meant everything stopped slipping from my mother’s. & i’m sorry i never learned your mother tongue, but you wouldn’t even meet my mother. wouldn’t move an inch out of the bubble for me or anyone else. i pull the judgment card nine times out of ten. i’d kill you in your sleep if i had the guts. i’d lick the lint from your belly button & unravel my intestines & make a bezoar of your hair. i’d be the shrine. i shed my layers slowly, returning to something resembling blended raw chicken & bravery & strawberry ice cream. it’s strange the way peeling goes & that distance makes the heart grow wiser, more aware. & that there is still a pathetic wisp of hunger lingering in the core. journey to the center of the earth, my pussy, my soul. let me go. let me go. i let it go. (i haven’t let it go). i want to let it go. let me go. steam room. sweat it out. get it out. you left me in the middle of the night with no good bye & never told me why. & still i feel like i need to close it all up, wrap it all up, the product of my christmas shadow birth. but we’re all out of scotch tape & cinnamon toast crunch & i’m all out of fucks & bullets & lactose free milk. i’m burning my shrine, forgiveness is divine. my aunt died & you fucked me while i cried.
