all i see is a threshold, grey and uninterrupted. it’s a miracle
we weren’t destroyed by the revenants of the school we once shared.
it can’t be midnight, it’s too bright, blurred. i swagger
down halls with a knife in my veins trying to reinvent cassette tapes
for a new generation of suicidal wind-swept teens.
the sweet embrace of death is cliché for a reason.
the most compassionate thing i’ve done for myself is to take bupropion.
the second most compassionate thing i’ve done is buspirone.
the third thing—lamotrigine.
do you feel loneliness in your cervix? your seminiferous tubes?
no.
my shoulder reminds me. the knife paints the floor
gold. my childhood: a protest against mental health.
honestly, i have nothing to say about change jars but as a kid i collected bottle caps in a cut-open jug of empty milk.
i was years ahead of Fallout.
the ornamental cherry tree crinkles the glass. cup is another word
for glass, not the only one.
the finger on the rim hums with ghosts. the third song on the Eagles’ Greatest Hits Volume One is about a girl with lyin’ eyes, eyes with no loyalty but for herself
and not even then—she roars.
becoming an adult is wanting to kill yourself in the Wine Country of France.
jellyfish in the Red Sea frightened me more than bombs in Helmand ever did but it was the jellyfish that pushed Sartre onto my doorstep.
i forget about the jellyfish often.
they never remembered me in the first place.
i didn’t have a mustache the first time i made love
she was wearing leather boots.
i wish i’d asked her to keep them on. as she started to moan
my dog burst from the kitchen below barking. into a future fuck
with a future mustache and a future bed—still no leather. stop calling it an Afghan.
it’s not a fucking Afghan, it’s a blanket. a blanket
cobbled together from regrets and death and handheld cups of Lucky Charms.
you should burn it.
it won’t make you feel better.
she bites my neck as i cum. fruitless
cherry blossoms had everything to do with it.
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Main Squeeze Literary Journal 