still

here are hands
that are really good at pretending
to be someone else’s hands

here are hands
that are really good at pretending
to be stuck nails

see them shine
how bright

my breath holds me

My lungs know what they’re doing
better than I do, so I never hold my breath
for a count of ten. My breath has grown up
and doesn’t want to be held by me anymore.
It has found ways to hold itself.
It has so many arms.

I’ve stopped really
looking for things anymore
I’ve started just swallowing
everything I touch

on people who ignore “I can’t”

“Nothing is impossible” you say
and you try to teach a loaf of bread to swim.
Say it will get better with practice,
instead of just falling apart.

gulp

you swallow my mouth
before I can tell you
everything you don’t want to know

complain about the taste
about how I’m making you fat

home from school
for as long as I could
I’d turn my nonexistent body from static
into music

I no longer am even a photograph
just the static crust on a photograph
taken of someone else

You have no future, say the ones
who want to steal it from you.
Oh, there are no cookies in the cookie jar.
I wonder how that happened.
I couldn’t possibly have eaten them.
I couldn’t possibly be vampiring sunlight from your hands
with the needles I say are going to stitch you whole.

They say you have no future
so no one will notice when it goes missing.

sugarnoose

it doesn’t matter whether you shout
or saran-wrap sweetness
if you’ve got me on a leash

you are what you eat

people say I am
my sandwich but I am not
my illness and this is why
I will never understand people