Transparent orange bottles fill her bathroom cabinet,

Her rippling glass of water on the marble countertop

my fairy lights fell from my ceiling,

the tape and paint and skin was peeling

Upon the ground where fungus creeps and thrives

Where monsters lie in wait for easy prey

I woke up unaware of who I was

Or how I came to be inside a cave.

first is line, of course,

there are so many you need to render my body

when i joke about being a manic pixie dream girl, i don’t mean it that literally

it’s not an invitation to mold me into what you want me to be

Galileo was wrong

We are the center of the universe

Nature’s fearsome nymph emerges from the Underworld

Nine lifetimes spent waiting for the rapture

“The fish is dry,” Mother snidely remarked with distaste. I stared down at my salmon on the kitchen table in commiseration; it really was dry. A sigh unwittingly escaped my lips.

Inside

Speaks, quietly and astoundingly audible,

the voice of the Mariana.

you are the sun to my moon

the day to my night

i like the way your words fall (all) over

the page, and make me run up a maze (the black lines

never contained you, but look! i can

jump them too)

I don’t like it when you touch me.

We try to make it black and white but it’s not black and white

My uncle is watching the football game.

A mind trapped in a cage, a cage made of melded steel poisoned with detrimental ideals.

It used to be called the black because it was natural and came straight from the earth.

cacophony, car windows open, sky—