peeling
It does not feel like I should be halfway through yet, which I guess is a good thing! Maybe—KNOCK ON WOOD—the second half will be a breeze. If you know me well (or maybe not even very well), you know that I always have the world’s worst sense of time, so I’m just glad for the rare occasions that it actually works in my favor.
CWs: light gore, skin picking
day 15
spring turns savory,
bitter, the ground beginning to weed-thicken
and kindle with flies. everything and
especially the skin behind my left ear
roughens, broken up by almost-
familiar life shoving up
toward the light. I trowel into it
with my unfiled nails, thinking
that I'm helping the birth, and furrow
dry dirt into the creature's
open mouth. I don't recognize
the noise nobody else can hear as
a gasp for air until, later, I pull
out a small rotting limb
from just above my jawline, furiously
pink and stinking of desperation.
if I could name anything
other than crocuses, I'd bury it
properly, but instead I drop it
back to the ground and tell myself
that way it will feed something
new. vein itself into a many-headed
flower, richly petaled and velveteen,
that I can pluck from the earth
and regret—unable to mourn—
all over again.