Living Carcasses

It’s beautiful to see how I care for others. I hold them in my arms as they quiver and quake, letting sleeping dreams lay to hear their mouths roar as they tiptoe across the room to see if I’m awake. I didn't  believe them when they called me sweet or caring as farewells turned into farewell and a few last words  on a piercing night.  

I still don't. 

It’s terrifying to see how I care for others. Bleeding in sobbing bathrooms and sticky fingertips as you  steady yourself against the sink. You squeeze the pus out and you do it with your thighs, your thoughts,  your happy lies and practiced visages. They don't need the extra burden; they are already holding up the  world for me. The least I can do is not add solar systems and galaxies to it.  

It's terrifying to see the rot lunging through in scathing tongues, in barbed fingers. You drown in the stink  of iron as you put your hands under your head as you try to sleep. Try it once: 

to whimper as you shift from side to side, from pain to thoughtful pain.  

I’m so happy that you didn't hurt me as I wore myself down in the night, only to have me still and wish  for the scars on my thighs to rip again. They say dull knives are better for revenge, it tears through the  skin unlike the clean cut of sabers so I’ll take two rusty ones please.  

My tetanus won't last for long against the tears in my self-portrait. 

It’s terrifying to have bumps of buried blood claim my body as the coffins rise to the surface, waiting to  vomit onto the landscape their citrine treasure. It’s a booty painfully acquired, make no mistake. You  have to be stupid enough to get it. I’m leading excavations on my own body, discovering contours and  mountains growing overnight and to move is to know untruth. You leave your body loose in hopes of  letting the pain flow and dissipate and live as if you will not collapse with relief if your legs finally give  way. 

It’s terrifying to see how I care for myself. I have been lied to by poetry that says you cannot care for  others if you can't care for yourself and I wonder with, pooling blood,  

what is worse: that I give shuffling legs and breaking words to others to heal, or that I sabotage myself to  give others a chance.

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