Humanity: Raw & Unfiltered
Her casket has a sterling lock — a key twelve-year-old sisters stalk, one summer day guardians are away. Bisque amputee they free, parts, dossier, undefiled in doily, French macrame, placed inside a curio, top shelf — you’ll have to wait to grow, know, yourselves, places grown-ups hide keys, pieces, doctors Read more
They burn her bedding the day she dies, garments, a bonfire while the household cries. Fabric cloth, linen, scarletina touched, servants collect — await a doll that’s clutched, static — protected, grandmother’s arms, bisque infant fevers cannot harm, Agatha, grey glass eyes undressed, a grim surprise, insufficient porcelain, modest dressing Read more
What love I’ve known I found on knees, by chance between iniquities. Fingers confined a backwards prayer, cutaneous chants without my underwear. Vestments, red wine a rosary, entwined lithe wrists you lead to liturgy, to genuflect before an altar, bare, a deity I wed in collar, chestnut hair. Services sworn in ballet veil, Read more
He rubs his thumb against two other ones, index and next, fingertip circles slow until it flows — honeysuckle scent from some dripping aperture, brass faucet. Knows by rote the bubble height you like — that steam makes nightmares dreams, cleans freshly shrunken dolls. How intimate submerging naked seems, even Read more
is there’s just one of you — more in the corps, a dozen girls who covet the headpiece secured by thirty bobby pins. Abhor your good fortune. Pretend to be friends. Peace is mathematically sound when it’s ten surrounding one, too terrified, thin. Learn survival means shopping, invitations — one Read more
Handpicked handmaiden, raven hair, a charm collected, jaunt in country air. Conveyed to castle, swift, by dainty, dirty arm, for sister, gift; he makes her mirror maid. A countess cloistered, brother bold, a lust rebuffed for years maturates manifold. No hunger for another face, she must be kismet: this twin Read more
I ask myself a lot why did he stop? Did I make too much noise? Did he hear other boys stir, their sleeping bags flop, anticipating eavesdrops? Too dark to see what he was turning me into beneath black nylon, stars. Do choked sobs travel far? A body he pulled from a Read more
A fairytale this thing called home: a shrine they keep that you’ve outgrown. They lure you back, a feast, homemade, with sugar cookies, wine, board games replayed to your childhood soundtrack. You learn it from the TV shows. Details, menus unique; the love’s transposed. Boyfriends all have it, normalcy; you Read more