October begins in city’s sweet drowning / our arms spread wide for lukewarm temperatures /
October swallows the last of the heat wave in hesitant gulps / lies under bleak sun with a
bellyache / October’s blood is moon-mottled indigo / it steals the soft in me to make its own
bedding / the sinews from my bones to polish its teeth / my dreams are recurring knife-wounds,
my mother / hissing, this is what it feels like to love you / cold upon waking, organs turned inside
out / an empty room like a corpse picked clean / October promises cinnamon-sweet release / but
pushes me under too-familiar numbness when my back is turned / the rain spills steady like a
lover / pretends it can’t hear stop like a lover, too / I drown over and over / the sun no longer sets
gracefully / but crash-lands into hell / bleeding heavy pink brushstrokes as it sails / the moon
fizzles away against the night’s bittersweet / and everything and nothing is happening all at once
/ my anger overstays her welcome / steals memories and / my mother’s rattled desperation to
light her own fires / I’m screaming at naked sound / sobbing hysterics at the way / even my own
wrecked sense of semi-stability won’t last / October sneaks in through my window / grinning
wild like hunger / presents me with gifts of deer skulls and butterfly fish and half-singed sweet
pea petals / it says, rip them all to shreds in your fingers / cry and feel and scream and mourn /
die and rise all over again.