This flame beats down
The length of wax
Chewing relentlessly away at my mind –
The steady beat and pulse
Of my breath. Tantalizing

I can see the blank page laid out
Before my eyes
Begging to enshroud my coupled hands
Shove them between a bare inch
Of their life
And then, resurrect

-empty insecurities convince
The notion
That the moon looks away
(whenever my sex feels promiscuous)
Lately, I cannot write
Adolescence has robbed me of my pen,
My body, my mind-

My skin, shriveled and unkept
Harbors the last pieces of
Everyone, except myself. A packrat
When all of my belongings have fallen out,
Laughing at me like gained weight

I swear, I am somewhere under here
Beneath the Third Reich, young girls
dowsed in sex, suicides that tug at my
feet, old dogs prepared to die and a man
who leapt from the roof of a toy store. And never survived.

I guess then
It is no surprise
That my soul, dog heavy,
Was dragged away.

Men race like horses over my body
Attempting to pound out the lingering
Sounds of pain
Sculpting the inevitable
And I
Forget what it is like
To write, to live a full life,
To be alive.


I feel nothing



"This will certify that the above work is completely original."

Avani Wood