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.