What Do You Want From Me

I come out screaming

and apparently

that counts as consent.

~

One wet infant howl

and the universe leans over the crib

with a clipboard.

~

Name.

Weight.

Future damage.

Probable humiliations.

~

First, the cute years.

~

Look at her growing.

~

As if growth is not attrition

with birthday candles.

As if a body is not a house

the weather keeps entering.

~

Then puberty kicks in the door

wearing cheap perfume

and carrying knives.

~

Blood from nowhere.

Shame from everywhere.

A mouth I do not trust.

A body I am expected to pilot

while everyone claps

from the burning shore.

~

Becoming, they call it.

~

Tiny word.

Huge invoice.

~

We could have been heroes, maybe,

in some cleaner species.

Something with wings.

Something without landlords.

Something that does not learn desire

by watching everyone lie about it.

~

But no.

~

We become mouths.

Hands.

Hunger in shoes.

Little republics of appetite

saluting ourselves in dirty mirrors.

~

And don’t start with saints.

~

For five fucking seconds

let the halo factory shut down.

~

None of us are clean.

~

Not mothers.

Not martyrs.

Not the men explaining virtue

with one hand on the sermon

and the other down the drain.

~

Not me.

~

Especially not me.

~

I am the patron saint

of bad timing,

wet mascara,

and giving the dark

just enough eye contact

to make it think

we are dating.

~

So what do you want from me?

~

Here I am.

~

Pinned to concrete.

Hands up.

Ribs counting themselves

like poor people before payday.

~

The air comes through my nostrils

thin and rented.

Every hour presses its thumb

into the soft fruit of me.

~

What.

~

What.

~

What.

~

You build a creature

tender enough to bruise from weather,

then act surprised

when it starts biting the rain.

~

You wind me up with hope,

that cheap little clockwork rat,

and laugh when I run screaming

into the furniture of history.

~

Entropy,

you needy bastard,

~

I know your hands.

~

Rust on the rail.

Mold in the lung.

The slow divorce

between skin and bone.

~

You want my face turned down.

You want me to admire the drop.

You want applause

for the engineering.

~

Fine.

~

Look.

~

Here is my fury,

still warm.

~

Here is my ruined little heart

kicking like a plastic bag

caught under a bus.

~

Here is my dignity,

which frankly

has not returned my calls.

~

And if God is in the room,

tell him to step forward.

~

I just want to talk.

~

By talk

I mean grip his golden ribs

through that expensive silence

and ask why he keeps making

breakable girls

then calling the shards

mysterious.

~

I am begging, yes.

~

Whimpering, yes.

~

Terrified, yes.

~

But I am also

feral as a snapped wire

in floodwater.

~

That is the joke.

~

That is the prayer.

~

That is the little black flower

growing through the crack.

~

I am falling apart

with both hands raised,

still ugly,

still breathing,

still refusing

to make this easy

for anyone.

.