jikivigoig

i fade with stilted shots, the audience waits for me.   choking.    oh god how could this happen with my throat twisted up and my head bound tight in ropes i'm not sure i want to untie?               snap my brittle wrists. i'm losing again, numbers scaling down to a place i should not be. a parasite is swallowing my energy.    tests are negative. i breathe. -- just as i drift into pale, fading sleep, his fingernails claw through the material of my skull. i don't know who he is but i remember the wooden floor beneath me the length of my hair catching under my back as i struggle and how it felt when he left me on the floor, limp tear stre

sometimes you just can't tell the difference between crumpled paper skin and the taste of someone else in your mouth. ropes bound across your chest, don't choke - they'll keep you trapped until your wishes are dry and your longings long dead.

(   your kidneys still ache sometimes   ) you need to stop damaging yourself -       snapping bones with blunt fists and bruised knuckles,       hear the yelps of a fallen,         another to escape your decomposing gaze, why won't you wake up for a while:               (  staring won't help much,                          perhaps eyes aren't necessary  ) whisper to your eyelashes when the sun screams orange through the splintered horizon         don't you burn without me             and when the blackened wishes smear across your cheeks, i'll hide you. (            the scars may fade but you won't forget  ) if you were to bleed a

lay my skeleton to rest in a grave dug so long ago, the sides are rough and caving in at parts, i'll carve stories into the gravestone to give me better memories. bitterness swirls in my sweat,   please don't let me go, i'm confused by such intense swinging: from feet-punching-the-clouds high right down to clutching hands and desperate tears and an urge to slice so overwhelming, i shake with my inability. pass me my flimsy little blades from your locked drawer, i don't want to start reaching for the kitchen knives.

give me someplace to hide. my buttons trip over themselves to leave the fabric gaping like a wound i can't close. put this together: the door does not wake me when the sky is bleeding night colours and the stars are weeping their light, the quiet collapse of the mattress should disturb the death in my limbs but i am locked in a box that will not open and through its darkness i cannot make out anything; wrap me up in familiar trappings, don't let this air escape my lungs - i am too vulnerable with my eyes closed.

the stress kicks in the walls to my brain, rubble clouds my eyes, i'd like to remain here curled up in too many layers shivering cold with skin burning away, my knuckles white, fingers clenched around the porcelain handle of my coffee cup: words die in my throat, my toes bleed purple. i don't remember slicing clean across a naked forearm but somehow i sit here, chest heaving, blood smeared across skin and there's a little blade in my hand. let me sleep and maybe i'll recall all that's black and far away in poisoned memory. i've lost all that was once certain.

i am bound in coils of darkened sleep, my past creeps up like a slinking hollow-eyed shadow: let me run with trailing paper paths beneath my feet, i don't like waking up half-naked, skin exposed to a world that chews on my fingers and chokes on my exhalations - these accusations lay bitter on my tongue - i'd rather drown in a voice that's always there than my own twisted suspicions. i button up my secrets, nestle the stained collar near my neck, and pin my eyes open with the unknowing: i don't like waking with my shirt yanked up around my neck, (  please let me lock the door to keep the monsters out- side.  ) let me check your nails at

your hands are curved brackets around my shoulders,   we're okay here with your coffee scent tangled up in my cheekbones - i recognise you in the most unfamiliar way - let me know if your pulse is scattered across your freckles like blood on the walls if you can't breathe long enough to allow your thoughts to seep through metal barriers:       your hands are forgiveness, i am laddered skin beneath soft eyes, you smooth my imperfections and sharp angles -                                                       i breathe you in.

1.     my eyes will not stop bleeding,   slashed apart with images too violent to describe:  so far below, my ribs are breaking apart and i breathe in too many slivers of glass for my lungs to survive and remain recognisable. memory, leave me alone. present time, leave me alone. project me so far in the future, i cannot discern the blurry shape of that girl      i will leave behind. 2.    the walls shake. 3.    i can't decide if these are laughs or tears. this is awfully familiar,            i cannot remember. i'm cradling too many hints in my wrinkled hands, but then, i'm also twisting flimsy razorblades with my fingers:       it's not li

(scratch-scratch-scratch) there are fingernails somewhere, i'm sure, but all i have on the ends of my fingers are knives: if this is healing, i may just end up healthily skinless.