there are places that I don’t go back to
but they come home to me
*
magnets within me
revisit cars that have replaced churches
when I have no time to be awake
*
faces cannot be forgotten
faces stay
the same as the act
the same intact memory
haunting routes and whereabouts
nobody will find me here
I came here to die
*
not to be found
*
but when they do
I will no longer exist
*
lost myself on a car seat
lost myself smashed across the rocks
lost myself with your foot on the pedal
lost myself with your nose in my hair
fell asleep with my own fingers on me in a trunk
dreaming of my own disappearance
disengagement
unnoticed
*
I revisit my hall of mirrors
where I hadn’t be allowed to be a child
*
splinters in my skin
womanhood strikes a chord
looks at me first
looks at me through a shard
I rebel against its form
blunt and accommodating
sharp enough to attract
harmless so that it may seek an indulgent frame
*
there is more than one reason
why it hurts to go back
*
I may be buried there
*
I may have done it myself
with my own mud-tainted hands
*
got rid of myself in a plastic bag
too scared to see what is inside
what I look(ed) like
ghosts share my space
my altar of discarded selves
through the windshield
*
I sent them to you
to stop chasing my father
*
don’t expect me to return
to please you
anymore
Croque-Melpomene 