will you please
just permit me
to feel out of place?

to perform these rituals
of sacred self extinction
alone?

      you see, I
      suffer
                    from these
                            bouts
                  of sentience

                  where I spill out
        over

the edges
of this fiction

and suddenly
                    I am
                            running out of skin
                            to build a home
                            to wrap my bones in

and suddenly
                    I am
                            chewing my nails
                            down to the cuticles
                            to see just how much of me
                            is dust today

and suddenly
                    I am
                            only a vessel

                            for my shadow’s wanderlust

and everything
once framed so neatly
within the saturnine halo
of a shadow’s diurnal orbit
is set free at dusk

and yet none but I
ever break away
from the horizon

none but I
ever tip the waiter for the rain
in diamonds dug
from tear ducts so benumbed

none but I
ever sow sunflower seeds
hoping they imprint on the moon instead

none but I
ever envies death

for her shapeless intimacy

none but I
ever drown in the nectar
that the dreamcatchers bleed

and suddenly
                    I am dying
                    all the deaths you dreamt for me

dressed in skin and shadows once again

and suddenly
                    I am dying
                    all the deaths you dreamt for me

dressed in skin and shadows once again

and suddenly
                    I am dying
                    all the deaths you dreamt for me                   

dressed in skin and shadows once again

and if I could have been a thought
perhaps it may have wondered

why so much of the sheer madness
of our hearts
wishes to go squandered
on those that are happier
to live unloved.