when I close my eyes i feel like i’m drowning
lapsed into memory, a tolerance numbing
men perpetually crowding me into corners
the weight of a vice clutching the back of my skull
i often find my body standing between rooms
exchanging nicotine-hungry gazes
with the kindest-looking strangers within sight
in the hopes that they will set me alight
they will never see me as a woman
but they will treat me as such
flies on the corpse of a fawn strangled in utero
i hold to that consciousness as if i never learned to let go
it’s a sickening glow that takes hold
undercurrents of bile burning at my tear ducts
lungs overflowing from the intake of kerosene
unable to breathe without remembering everything
/// 