OTHER WOMAN
I know:
A face is a shroud.
A face is a hole where violence is spoken.
A face isn’t a face at all.
A suggestion of lift,
paint a vessel to the sky,
the only pastoral.
The sky is cut into.
The face is cut into.
Her body cuts into the earth.
She is grass and shadow
until she is not.
Flesh, the only word
held in the mouth.
Portrait of white women
by a white woman, witness, creator.
A hint of her lovely body, the dress
she wears floral, a distraction.
Or maybe the point, sharp, like flint,
struck & struck again.
Where am I?
I look for myself everywhere.
find the pink corners
of my lips on her arms.
find myself destructive
& not destroyed.
I find a voyeur in my hands.
I want to reach out
& touch, feel her
for myself.
A new woman
on display.
I AM, I AM, I AM.
“there’s no old self to go back to”
—lovergirl on tumblr
wet eyes look straight
into digital.
say pity me.
see red skin, sun bleached
grass behind childhood
home at the end
of july. cut
through fields with a mickey
of vodka
& a bottle of ativan.
both stolen, both unopened.
ticks in pubic hair, digging heads
in, suck so softly she can’t feel. a kiss
while asleep. she thinks she’d like to die
but she never does.
take a photo instead, click & flash
recognition.
remember this woman
who is a girl. she swallows suns,
a hole where her stomach is
& light escapes.
that’s when she splits
her self in
two.
slams her wrists against the ground
until they’re numb.
until the only thing
she feels is static, yellow buzz
behind her eyelids.
imagine her body past
& in the future.
a star that collides with another
star & explodes. it’s true
that she never thought
of herself
as something that happens
right now.
