1. the faster your heart flutters, the quicker the dust fills it

my teeth are open-rooted, so you can’t tell how much I gnaw (on the past) on how your hands on my throat felt like salvation

2. you are hydrogen and helium; hot enough to rip the colour from my eyes

& I am cold, crumbling rock; pock-marked and hiding my face from the world

your soul tastes like burning, and my mouth is full of holes from the embers

3. My cheeks flushed with hot, thick blood, and oh my god, I didn’t know-

I didn’t know it would feel like this, like I’m sinking into my own skin, about to implode and become nothing-

become nothing and take your hands with me across the expanse of a hundred empty skies-

a hundred empty skies casting shadows over cities full of radiant girls who hate themselves, they hate themselves-

they hate themselves, and I want to show you what you’ve done

4. I was jarred by the shock of it,

felt all of my ribs touch each other

I looked at you with blood in my mouth and

laughed so hard I felt

the acid

come up out of my stomach

every hair on my body

stood on end, and you put

my heart in your mouth and whispered,

“you can’t love this world if you don’t

love destruction”

5. the hands of the clock

pressed to the floor, and the tiles

wet

from the sink I let overflow

I ran out of the house and

screamed until the snow

freight-trained

down the piebald mountainside, and

swallowed everything I knew

I won’t cry when the snow fills my

lungs

and I won’t reach for you;

I am not just a small mouth and a

soft

heart, I will back my own revolution,

and my name will be

mine

to reinvent

6. I slide between the walls and melt like candle, in my mind I am running my sagacious hands along the spine of each season. I can feel them, like if colours had their own texture.

the weather turned inside out, and found the sky, the rain caught in my throat, and the summer died in my arms