questa vita

            “I’m sorry, we’re out of that,” the clerk said dismissively to me, her heavily lidded eyes not meeting mine. Automatically, I thought, “lie!” and was startled by the intensity of the feeling. I shook my head a little bit and followed the truck stop diner looking lady down the candy aisle.             “Wait, please could you check the back? This corner store is the only place that carries that brand and scent of lotion.” The woman grunted but made her way to the back room. The lotion was Tinsley honey oat, and it was all that her mother used to use. It had been 5 years since her mother had died in a car accident. She wasn’t sick or old. Just unlucky. Ever since then, I had stopped by this corner store (not exactly accurate- it was completely out of my way) once every 2 weeks to buy more of it. My mother’s house was down the block from here, a spacious brick townhouse on West Rose. She...

if only you knew what i knew i want to levitate out of here. toe tips, leaving ground, air catching on a stitch in my chest like a rogue thread in my sweater, catching the loose skin on my finger i want to levitate out of my mind for just one day i'd go to somewhere that doesn't have a name and i'd lose my name and nobody would know me and nobody would have any of their loose stitches attached to me. the makeshift cage of strings they've created around me would stretch and stretch as i go higher and higher and snap and i'm free

out in the center line cars passing by on either side nobody is looking at you. nobody sees you peeling back your layers peeling and tearing at your skin until your stomach is a gaping hole, the white hot energy coursing into the different channels in your body your veins frayed, nerve endings jagged like wires ivory cage struggling to keep it all in you pull off different parts of yourself until you're too fragile and you scatter them all across the pavement ashes raining down like confetti, catching in the wind, feathers nobody is looking at you as your knees become one with the ground with a crack, splintering your bones blood trickles in strings and you're desperate for them to see, screaming at them to see and simultaneously hiding behind your fingers so they can't so they can't see what you're doing to yourself what would they think?