The Dead Don’t Sleep
When she least suspects, her dead and buried will call her. She won’t answer and instead will let her voicemail listen as they try to argue themselves back out of exile. Back to living and breathing. Back to her. Their efforts will be futile in the end. Paranoid people aren’t quick to forgive. What if they still want her dead too? The doctors brought her back that last time — but a ghost hasn’t made the same Hippocratic oath. It’d be ignorant to think her dead wouldn’t be in attendance at such a long-awaited funeral. In her head, her dead has the day circled in red on a calendar.
She’ll change her phone number and turn it off during the day, but the dead don’t sleep. Their calls might show up as unsolicited telemarketers or her credit card company. She knows better than to answer. Her voicemail will catch their empty pleas between each commination. Her voicemail knows better than to keep them.
She’ll say she wants her dead to stay buried but leaves a shovel at each gravestone — just in case. She’ll never shake her ghosts; They cling to her legs as a child would. Their grip tightens around her calf with each step she takes. Backward or forward, it won’t matter. After everything, they still demand more. Her dead keeps her frozen right where they left her. The two-story house they killed her in that first time. She’ll be awake but still lying in bed. Her memory will flip through each bed she has ever slept in to place the exact one she woke up lying in. For just a moment, she’ll be back in her childhood bedroom. She will still feel her dead pressing their weight on her chest. The body will remind her she is now older, bigger, and 170 miles away.
Her persecution complex runs rampant over her life. It is irrational and obsessive, but everyone who is supposed to love her tries to kill her first. Paranoid purification of her mind as a defense mechanism — they won’t catch her off guard again. In the meantime, she’ll silence her phone and run. Change cities and color her hair. They’ll still recognize her anywhere. She just needs to feel in control of something. Her dead are coming for her but until then — they recommend enjoying the land of the living.
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what do i want to do today?
on my youngest brother’s 23rd birthday / we rewatched a movie we had not seen / since we were sticky-fingered children / it scared me then / now we laughed / my brothers’ low rumbles / in tune / with my high-pitched giggles / my girlfriends’ focus / on one piece / using thin brushes / for small details / while I fingerpaint / without washing my hands between / letting previous colors / create new ones / I pry open boxes of crayons / and I color / exclusively / outside the lines / I buy a skateboard over the summer / older brother teaches himself how to cook / birthday brother buys / himself / a present too / and this is all that matters / indulgence / in what never was / in what is still rightfully ours / a healing desire / to be a child once again / satiated only by / a rock collection / new stuffed animal / poster / cd / or / an old favorite movie​
False Realities
I dance delusionally before God.
We waltz amongst ivy —
basking as you show me off.
Trying anything to make this last,
to relax into you like bathwater.
Darkened centers flushed into beginnings;
like the mother creating her daughter.
Against my mind's ease…
their senses seem awry.
The heavens are lost in their
own unknowing.
My one true north has shifted with daybreak —
it curls in the outskirts of my vision.
My tears join the stars themselves,
like gas scrambling into space
I plead ignorance; I call for a revelation
The spoils go to the brave.
I call for both Gods and Monsters to immortalize how I feel.
To eternalize a supposedly shameful temptation —
though nothing followed.
The words that carry the most weight ring empty in their ears.
The sky plummets as the day folds in on itself.​
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Untitled
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Salty air blows straight through our spoilt smell
I’m always asking for you to get back on this sinking ship,
Where the view is so lovely when the boat is on its axis as we sink with the sun
Where the view is so lovely it distracts your nose from our stale stench
We won’t be able to ignore the bad taste in our mouths though
The spaces between the ocean and the shore are reserved seats for you and I
You hope the waves don’t drown us
I hope they do, but before I would like to float on my back
Just for a moment​
p!nk
mini-skirts made of snakeskin being pulled at by a crackle nail polish manicure while the other hand refreshes perez hilton's website to read about paris hilton (duh). every song by the killers burned onto a mixed cd. her friend's broken down two-seater — everyone she knows is dog-piled on top of one another so they don't get pulled over. vodka that tastes like nail polish remover poured into a water bottle and then shoved into a backpack. older friends that should know better but don't. they pick her up every friday. not a dime (she can't pay her rent) but it's saturday night so no food, only drinks!​
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A Self-Portrait of Anchorage, AK
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I want to throw my phone away,
I have to text you back before I do it.
I wish I could move away from Alaska
and only stay during the season of perpetual daylight.
I want to go fishing on the Kenai fjord.
While I eat sourdough bread,
& the midnight sun washes over it all.
I need to run away somewhere else every couple of months.
Unraveling the metaphors of living in 24/7 darkness;
That sounds too hard — even for me.
I am never where I am supposed to be,
& everybody knows except for me.
Is it that I am supposed to be in a backsplit?
Or go back for my degree?
My future feels more like a punishment.
This summer was unrelenting;
in that, I was giving up — over and over.
It was just so hot,
I was so tired.
Maybe it does not have to be Anchorage anymore.
I could move to Juneau instead or vacation in Ketchikan!
My groceries could still arrive via cargo port.
(I could still be as happy as I was when I first visited)
If I must wake up to darkness in the morning,
I hope that I fell asleep next to you. ​​
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“Multiverse” by Peaer
In another universe…
I have never cried.
I have never worked a job I didn't want.
My friends all live in the same city.
In another universe…
I drive a brand-new car and
I don’t love you more than you love me.
In another universe…
I don’t cut off pieces of myself to fit into yours.
Instead
I stand up for myself and
my parents never leave me.
In another universe...
I realize I am a lesbian sooner rather than later.
In another universe…
I don’t obsess over anything other than myself.
I grow up in a different part of Texas.
(I never meet you)
In another universe…
I am happy in a different way than I am in this one.
Not better, but different. ​
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Stalling
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I kept trying to mold
my grief into something else.
It just became more grief —
looping & elongating inside my chest.
I gathered all of the stars,
in the sky,
on the ground,
& into my hands.
I had woven a new constellation;
a string of stars spoke of the
resentment held for me.
I started painting women
with their eyes closed.
Recording conversations with them
talking to each other.
Never with me.
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Previously published in Dipity Literary Magazine
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Dionysus
I pray to Dionysus—
begging him to walk me through his vineyard
Asking him to sew me to his thigh and make me twice-born too
I fear he is the only one who will truly understand
I offer him the last sip of every wine bottle
And he will craft my very own drinking cup
He’ll tell me of the lover he grieves
How loss concaves into surrender
His body turned to leaves
How it was from that vine
That Dionysus first made wine
Feet outrunning the mourning
Just by thinking of running
I pray to Dionysus—
The only God who has proven himself to me
The only God to give me retribution
I offer him alternating sips of my Pinot,
Drunk tears collected in a bottle and
Worst fears in pairs
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