god, grant me the wisdom to know what i want: a spironolactone body and a rose quartz love, and to always stay in motion, reading on the train, sangria-drunk, god grant me serenity, and a titanic touch.

cathedral bells, and i'm alive, my hair grows back, i change my style, as the blue light of the world once more coerces me into a slow, irrepressible smile, i still want a faith like blue-lace around my (small and pretty) neck to deal with the soapstains soaked into my friendships, the winestains worked into the carpets, the bloodstains baked into the quilt that my grandmother had sewn for my parents' wedding, no, i haven't been screaming yet, but i started eating every day, with the world's most rational faith in my giaquinto magdalene body. walking towards jacob's ladder (or hot air balloon), maybe my capital s Something is coming capital s Soon, but it won't be your blood; only stones will rain down on me from all four corners of my being, shattered glass and plastic beads, and green salt-rings from costume jewelry, cold and wet, i will be clean, write down in your blood "what it means to me:...", knotted hair and gnashing teeth, oh, baby, exorcise me when i was 17 i had this fantasy of blood raining down on me, slayer style, so i could drown my sharp edges (something something twin fantasy) and try to become something adjacent to freud's mut or stevonnie, with a vulture's eyes and a scarab's smile, and since then, and over and over again, i've tried to cleanse myself with blood, falling in and out of love, and throwing people out, and bringing them right back into the light of my solipsistic melodrama sun. how many haircuts can i give myself before the summer comes? and what of my pain could i describe to a future love in a tearoom or confessional booth or naked in front of a stranger? and how will my pain survive outside of my unconcealed scars? and how will i survive when everything that i had fought for is gone, when i need to turn myself back into the light of outwardly expressible love? rain down on me from all four corners of my being, shattered glass and plastic beads, and green salt-rings from costume jewelry, cold and wet, i will be clean, write down in your blood "what it means to me:...", knotted hair and gnashing teeth, oh, baby, exorcise me! [the mirror broke, the mirror broke, and i had to turn the other way, and i saw you, Actual You, an unhewn stone in your hand, "do not spurn", "do not dread", "do not bristle from it", neither of our hands are like thorns in the flesh, oh lord! You are not violence when you sing: "'I have loved you, says YHVH...'" ...and there i stand, behind your walls, gazing through the windows, and through the holes, a rod in my hand, sugarcane to guide, i have died 20,000 times in the past three years of my little life, that I cannot mourn though I recognize that as i've watched, your skin's grown white, reflection, et cetera, spectre-bride, so now i stare only at my bed, across through the bugscreen i now tear to shreds, and in that bed, there lies my heart, covered in your hair, but it's still my heart! i open up my chest, lay it in your place, and this is the day that some lord has made! "'I have loved you, says YHVH...'" this revelation i have seen every single day since christmas, 2019, but it's revealed continuously, and not all at once as i had once believed, until one day, i'll open my eyes, in my calcite tower in the mountainside, whose deed was yours until the day you died, but i awoke to find so strangely Mine, and in that mirror, i'll see a light, and i will own my god, and i will own my life, and all will be calm, and the light will say to me: "I have loved you" "I have loved you" ...and my heart is my mishkan, it will always be mine, even if it's been given away, so the love i have given will also be mine, I have loved you.

i am learning to love with isenheim altarpiece hands. i'll lie down infinitely low, and spread my palms as wide as i can, ready for the nails, or porcelain crowns in my chocked-open mouth, the sweetest sound of breath rushing between my new gap-teeth, reconstruct me because i know just what i want but i just don't want it! a boldface caps-locked sans serif italic romance! ...but now that i am so so close to the actual Thing, my little a, the ecstatic motion of our now-bare feet, i turn away ...but the motion returned! i could feel it twirling and bouncing, boring a hole through me when i was set free, river-jordan-clean, on east ninth street at 5am, the vision was clear: glimmering transcendence shone through claw marks on my chest, i escaped the quicksand transience oh! o! my soul, its a battle, now that true love's very signifiers won't loosen their hold— the scent of bayberry candle and pine, ceramic heating, dry skin, cool coffee, and the ghosts of my life, somewhere someone's sitting with me in my head, if and when i come to mind how will you reconstruct me? underneath adam’s garmet rest the sore and stubborn mechanics; the naked truth that honest bodies are only images unless you are inside either of them, hallelu- to those who have seen my unformed limbs, and to those who have recorded them, what will i have to offer you? and what will i have to offer those people that i have lost in 2019, 2020, and 2021 and 2022 and 2023? and those i never had in between, call me, touch me, and see that my skin still stops you when you stick your finger between my ribs and sing along after, you thomases! groove with me your bony hips across our disjointed matricies! wine-chalked lips, a movie kiss, and i am vomiting two liters of green kratom powder, diet tonic, and seagram’s gin, and i’ll admit, i am not living anything close to the life i had dreamt at 18 by crumb or stony creek, in in the sunny-golden cinema of romance and barren trees—i was conceited! i’ve been deceived! my own great expectations were the near-death of me! then came the blood-stained sheets, the two fake teeth, two days, five weeks, three ghosts, but the indefatigable stream, to whom i still think i sing yes i know! i am constantly still coming to—i have been singing about spring since i hardly knew what the winter would really look like, but now i think i do, now that the motion’s returned! i can feel it bouncing and twirling, boring a hole through me, i have been set free, river jordan-clean, on east ninth street, at 5am the vision was clear: glimmers of transcendence in the claw marks down my neck i escaped the quicksand transcience

god, grant me the patience to live until june, to believe in a tenderness which belies my hollow, animal moon, and to live with the sadness, yeah, me and wendy, we know, that one of these days we will be delivered to the place we really want to go uh huh