i tell you
i think im hallucinating because IT
flew at me and cackled, but cackled with ITs wings,
the sort of horrid laughter that makes you think
of an abomination borne from a lineage of hyenas and cuckoos,
do you ever sit and wonder why animals don't engage more in interspecies mating?
and i might be having an episode,
only because i swear IT
was there for a second, a shadow flaunting ITs freedom in front of my eyelids
and then IT was gone,
do you think IT's buried ITself into my skin?
dug ITself an incect-ous replica of the củ chi tunnels out of my flesh?
perhaps i am rotting inside,
i tell you.
IT
has laid ITs eggs and maggots are sprouting from my bones,
and in three days i will need a transplant to replace every marrow in my body
is this body even mine?
and by now i have talked your ears off,
because there is blood dripping from the holes in your head,
and yet you nod and smile
so your pretty beach curls bounce up and down
and up and down
and up and down
and
Don't be silly,
you say,
like my thoughts are cannon fodder,
though around you they just might be.
Stop fighting wars with the bugs in your head,
you say,
and have i ever told you the sun in your eyes has been burning my soul for
the past eight hundred and eighty-eight days?
and if i lie sideways that's thrice the eternities i could spend taking in
its retched beauty —
did you capture lucifer on your trip down from the heavens?
is he lying in your basement chained to a system of iron cuffs and wires?
Shush,
you say,
and i know you could never do that and
now that i think about it maybe IT
came for me and not you
because i am the devil reincarnate
like Jesus but the Jesus that would stuff my face with bread after an hour in the desert
and pump wine into my veins instead of
blessing liquor with my blood.
Does it matter?
you say,
and im looking at my arm but there are no pest-related holes,
just the crevices shaped like runes i was supposed to carve into my chest
but it was too difficult to, so i used my biceps instead,
so maybe it doesn't
and i tell you all that
only for you to grin the grin of a cheshire cat
but the soft and dainty sort
while i lie, splayed open as your fingers toil away
at the knots in my hair and the lumps in my chest and all the bits
i've ever ruined chasing after drones (of the honeybee sort),
i was only a kid then.
so i tell you
i think im hallucinating because
it's bewildering to me that you could look at this infested shell of a being
and think it held any sort of beauty
but yet here you are
in my bedroom
and under my duvets,
another warm body to hold while i shield myself from IT.