DRWick

I'm strangling a paintroller clean when your crooked lips pop into my head. I spent the afternoon painting my bedroom in pale green, slashing bright swatch over dull wound over a dark gray the same hue as those Victorian painted lady blues. It had to be three tones, three types of the same; a family by any other name but always subject to those fanning subtle degrees of abuse. When we cleaned brushes at the end of the day, you always told me to use Dawn; I've got Palmolive but, really, what's the difference? They both bring up suds, pry out pigment, leave tiny flecks of latex looped into my armhair. For a split second, I can feel the old

Concessions never confused themselves with aspirin and I refuse to condone breathing beneath wet fabric; hypothermia passed me by, frostbite wouldn't take me in so now it's just me and the slow drown of survivor's havoc. Spilled soaking wet at an impasse without captured breath, roll eyes back into my head but pupils still know the difference; shoulders mirror knees shaking, I'm almost out of my depth and still not sure there's an acceptable way to beat this. My feet find the ground in round-heavy cadence, body shunning cells I've had for years, faces flaking off; I'm hungry as hell for the hollowing of my heroes and saints, it keeps me lea

Sometimes a seance feels necessary, so, on a humid afternoon in mid-July two days from outliving my mother by a year, I decide to call some ghosts and see what's shaking in the afterlife these days. Nothing much new, except Ghost Superior finally sees that people can believe in whatever imaginary friend they need and Weeping Heart unexpectedly accepted that her miracle baby has grown into a gigantic asshole. I'm surprised to find I'm glad for them much in the way a groundskeeper might be happy there are some new potted plants to mow around this year. Time moves slower for them, there in the southern lands, each clock face a hypnotic cir

There's a great chasm of want inside me I've never quite figured out how to fill, even though I'm sheltered by a dozen hearts, each the size and weight of heaven. I've tried the journey to the bottom and have never found stairs, even though the violent miners have always traveled free in and out through my vulnerabilities. Even today there's a war inside of me I desperately believe I can win, even though when the medic says's he's found my heart, he hands me a grenade. I open my mouth to correct him, even as I nestle it into place between my lungs because every veteran knows that if the weapon fits, you wear it.

Feel nothing for weeks until, abruptly, the cold war snaps -- now my skull is brimming full with heavy stones, chest cavity jumping hard against the grip of a familiar timpani fist and these echoes don't know the meaning of de-escalation; my commanding officers never held a pen to any sort of convention, Geneva or otherwise. I'm terrified when allied eyes patrol the border of my expressions -- I hold my breath, coil up tight against the foxhole chambers of my heart and beg my brain for ceasefire; it tells me there's no moratorium for the rippling of this aftermath and, try as I might, I'm afraid I'll never truly expatriate because the border

Close my eyes and I'm neck deep in all those once upon a times: freckles pulling across her bare shoulders in constellations of want, bluest eyes chipping small into slippery ice, slender hands armored in carmine search down -- all of them digging through, picking apart, whispering one thing in the daylight, another in the dark. I still feel the echo of every crescendo, seams of nerves splitting, soft lips clicking firmly into gear then dragging back, re-loading, bearing down; my clockwork's all stripped, spine's still all stretched out of shape from walking backwards on hands through those double-thick, triple-slick eggshell pits. Ever the

Though I've always loved spirals, I had never thought before the curve of ammonite would remind me of a woman -- the slow inner loop and all it's complicated compartments bringing to mind your cheek, the ways in which you mince your damages so that you might pack them away neatly, quietly; so deeply they might as well be sediment. When I was young and getting smaller by the day, I dreamed of being a paleontologist: the idea of sleeping giants and resting bones convincing me there was a way to resurrect the dead. Now, I know even less about which tool is gentlest, how many lines a grid requires or what the hot sun might feel like on the nape

Thinking about leaving, focused on feeling left behind, a girl with a chain at her throat and arrows for brains falls out of my novice pencil tip: eyes clenched shut, lips pressing tight, she reminds me I don't need a gun anymore to force myself into the night -- a hand is more than enough when behaviors flood the brain with an overdose of feelgood. Each finger tip is a different bullet: one for each half of this awful dissonance -- I could feel my whole body relax, let my mind go like a dissatisfied balloon but if I do that, my peace becomes a ticking clock, each chemical tick taking me closer to sober. How much I want the pipe anyway is t

We were all young, making promises we didn't know how to keep while a blonde hurricane thrashed through a lifetime of confusion and battered us through the night, sparking a tidal wave that crashed us all apart -- we were all drowning in our own way that year. I know you've no reason to trust in me, but in my own shadow of hopes raised and dashed, I finally believe the storm has passed. I don't always remember what the sunlight felt like all those years ago but I know this new warmth as it spreads through my waterlogged heart. I can't imagine the face you live behind now, have no idea what shore you finally washed up on -- or if you've f

Suicide makes you cocky -- the therapists never warn you about that part. "Oh, well, I didn't die of brain cancer at 24 like my mom, so what else could touch me except for my own hand?" Then, a week after turning 25, your doctor sits you down, face like a stone, listing your cystic ovaries, your crushing flesh, your tachycardia, nicotine addiction, climbing blood pressure and falling HDL -- all adding up to the nice round sum of of two words: cardiac arrest. Mortality is real, now. Every time your heart races at the gym, you hold your breath, count: one, two, six, twelve -- is thirteen the beat that kills you? When waves rush in your ears