How much easier it is to see your body as a house instead of a home,

All cracked concrete steps and chain link fence,

With bullet holes in the front door – always open.

How I leave it cracked, my scars a proud decoration.

My body is the haunted house that rests on the corner,

The anxious doorbell that no one wishes to ring, clattering in its shell.

Monsters live in there, don't you know?

In here, I mean – in me.

There is blood soaked into the floorboards, the cushions, the walls;

Sadness hangs proud above the mantle,

Its twisted face greets you at the door.

Here I take my clothes off, and the ghosts come out to play.

The ghosts here are not nice, and they will stain you before you realize that you have been touched.

They soak in deep, they never wash away.

Scrub and scrub and scrub until I am nothing but polished bone,

Nicks and scars that still yet bruise.

My clock reads witching hour, and here I am:

Round face poured up to the sky, half-love and moondrunk.

I am a thing made of halves, and I do not think that I could ever handle being whole.

I am a quiet fumble lost somewhere in the dark,

Seeking a corner for comfort.

I am the quietness, I am the fumble,

I am lost somewhere and I am also the dark.

I am worn peach silk and out of date prescription pills,

Legs splayed open beneath darkened covers,

Twisted and still soft from sleep.

The way that my skin fits in hands, the way that it was almost made to be held.