with all of my doubt
1

my body would be cracked open like a small muscle. the angels took their tongue and teeth, biting and ripping me out of the protection of my shell, and spit me out into the heat of the world and the sand. i would be unable to move, my spine and blood and brain all pale blue nothingness. i think, if i was a small girl again, i would have tried harder to learn. tried harder to build resilience. but what resilience is there, feeling the hot metal of a utensil carve deep through your body, and spoon out your insides. i think i would have protected my innocence, whatever that would take. it would have been nicer, to die a virgin, than to die whatever my body is melted into now. i think i would have tried to learn wood carving, or wood working, and carved myself a small coffin i could have drifted to sleep in. i would have it my way. your hand on my chest, gets sucked in the wet flesh and folds of skin, and passes right through. laid upon the ground, i was born silent, and only after this world held my wrists and pressed my torso against the floor, was i made squeeling, screaming. down below my aching ankles, was i made real, and potently real. with all of my rage, i was made, into silent mercy.

january 5th, i was born again. my brain was made asunder, pieces all over the floor, nothing pink or brown. my skull propped open with little pearlescent craters of bone and dust. i found it hard to regain consciousness. this forsaken heart inside me, did not beat, instead, only my muscles, burning up like a winterish fever, ached and sparked real animation. i had pulled myself from the ground, felt for my own breath, and found some mocking flutter careening through my ribcage. i wandered only inside the small attic i had been reborn in, my cold skin draped in lotus colored cloth and silk. the attic, like my body, had been hidden away for some time, unseen and untouched until i awoke already inside of it. the feeling of soft wood under my feet was the only sensation rocketing through my legs, walking. the window, at the far side of the attic, mummified with heavy white curtains, turned curdled. they looked like someone had used them to wipe themselves with. it didn't stop me from touching or moving them aside, i was the same. the glass pane was completely fogged up, the inside portion fried with condensation and wire paneling. i could see only the glare of white sun and the terrible pounding of rain. my fingers slid down the numb smoothness, making some sort of vibrating sensation within my wrist. my own hand, tucked and stiff, bound with fabric strips and spiraling wire that had been eaten through and slumped apart, still slack and connecting my arms behind my back like an artery. i backed away, and touched my own skin, the same temperature of that frosted glass. i felt my way through the rest of the attic, hushed sobs hiccupping through my chest and throat, i must be hysterical from the way my throat collapsed and suffocated the back of my tongue and whatever was breathing inside of me. clamping down, like a hand pulling my throat. i couldn't hear myself cry, i couldn't really hear anything my body was doing, but i saw the little droplets explode on the tawny wood in front of my feet. the only evidence i was reacting. it was like i was still waking up, the cloudy disconnected sputters of my consciousness in this body. the attic had one singular exit, a sealed door with two wooden spiraled bainsters sticking by each side of the door. the door, unusually slim, peeling black paint and even darker wood underneath, felt forbidden to look at, and oppressive to think of in my mind's eye, a childish and slow thought that would not form itself even in the empty hollows of my mind. i could not touch the door, as every time i looked in its direction, the back right corner of the attic underneath the large ceiling banister that careened and crashed through the empty space, i found myself paralyzed and driven into undeniable hopelessness. like a sick animal, i circled and circled, towards that door, then to the window, over and over, pacing and muttering silent spit reverberating against my lips, as no words became real in my mind. besides the door and the two guardpost banisters, there was not much else in the attic. one white mattress, draped in white sheets piled high, that smelled highly of sweet perfume and wet dirt. there were a few boxes of clothes, all disintegrating evenly into pastry layers within the rotten cardboard. there was a dark wooded and large vanity sat plastered to the wall, the dust christening its mirror and various compacts and frosted perfume bottles shaped like doves, diamonds, deer, flowers, and ornaments. within the mirror, i looked upon myself, disappointed and forlorn. my face was plastered in sweat and dust too. my eyes, dark and shadowed by my eyelashes, twisted up and forlorn, my hair, long and dark, nestling into the parts of my body reclaimed by the rot of abandonment. my silhouette was sinewy and sharp in the dappled light, and as i pirouetted myself like some sort of glass bead, twirling myself clumsily around for only myself to see and observe, i took inventory of all the lines of withered and dissintegrated thread sewn running up and down my waist and chest, a frankenstein display of neglect all over me. my back, a few large downy feathers stuck out from binds of metal clasps and fabric pinned and stapled and sewn down my back. like i had a large couch cushion bound to my back. i tried to feel at it, but my hands would not move where i wanted, and i shakily felt the first wave of exhuastion, another paralyzing dragging feeling towards the floor. i touched the lamps on the vanity, and the lights worked as my fingers fumbled and trembled trying to twist the knob underneath its lampshade. they were lacey and cream colored, sunken in with dust but still bright and warm, i sat and looked at the mirror and all the forgotten heretic items, entombed here with something as lost as me. i couldn't bare to look at myself in the mirror. i couldn't bare the stand in the light, which seemed to pass through me, eat away at my flesh. i sat against the wall finally, crumpling into a box of clothes, and curling underneath the jasmine and cloth rot smells. i let myself fall away, turn into a dream again, and sink into hiding. what else was there to do, i did not exist to anyone, but the place where my fingers and feed had disturbed the abandonment of the attic.

the next day, whenever my consciousness stirred and erupted within my head and heart, i sat up from beneath the clothes. i can't tell when the hours pass when i don't move, when i become paralyzed with that sinking drowning screaming inside my body, that refuses to come out. its own shame won't let it be expressed, and instead it's relegated to the stifling cage of my ribs and stoned stomach. i climb and cling with my limited mobility from the box of clothes, letting tears cascade meaninglessly down my face. what good will they do in this wooden mausoleum,