Gold

Heavy words, insinuations if you will
are left like baggage, there they are, on the back porch of my mind.
All of them lined up in order, not of appearance but importance.
Baffling renditions of memories held within their confines,
these ghostly memories cannot find their place in the now,
the new order of things.
They flutter instead, like confetti behind my eyes.
Wishing that I step back into the old way of being, they entice me.
Holding on to reality with intent is not the issue, the issue is-
how to grasp the invisible
with its gauze of insanity, making it my own,
living with it, entombed, my forced facade.
The skin I breathe in holds me, hostage.
How many times I have wanted to cut myself,
to be free of its stifling grasp.
Oh how is squishes my heart, crushing my lungs
This skin, too tight for a size small, too big for the ones I call my own.
We all lift its gapping flaps when it stretches we take solace,
but it lives on its own stretchy timetable, it has its rules, and its limits
Now I am sucked tight; I force feed myself to make room.
Room for the mistakes swallowed one by one,
room for the what could have been,
inhaled with the sharpest of cheese.
My throat grows tight, the gorge rising.
I panic, puke and then swallow.
My life has been about swallowing.
I know how to tuck the pills, food, sex, bullshit and bile behind my esophagus and I know how to keep that panthera of chaos satiated.
I eat. I swallow. I add.
Under cream, the screams are muffled.
Dancing with alcohol, the remembrances feel cinematic.
Walking with shame, only then am I an artist,
worth my weight in food, if not gold.

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