on hunger and dirty hands
cutting is an angular, consonant-heavy word in the mouth of my mother. you can see it scrape her tongue on the way out; see it land on the floor like a dead thing. open eyes that catch the light and kill it; skinned, raw body and mangled chest.
a rotten corpse between us that fills the room and will not stop screaming. rotten corpse between us that no one wants to touch.
this hurt is a starving animal; blood hungry and thankless. i break open the skin over my throat and choke out the shame.
i want to unlearn the way that 3 am settles heavy over a body that no longer wants to be a body. i want to unlearn the place between breathing and not; between one knife and another.
mother; tear yourself apart and some of the monsters climb out. but tear yourself apart and a thousand more make home in the wreckage.
we scrape dirt over the body on the floor when the sun comes up.
my sister asks about the smell.
my sister asks about the grave.
i bite out my tongue and beg it to forgive me, but my mother’s mouth is still full of blood and i am still keeping razors inside my ribs.
redemption has dirty hands too.
god stopped answering my letters when i told him his spilt blood wasn’t enough and drained all of mine.
