You writer, you liar!

If I had a daughter I would name her Indiana. 

I don’t plan on having a daughter. Maybe I should start calling myself Indiana. 

I wasted four
years scratching
his back with one
hand, writing her
poetry with the other

He was at least seven different
people at once. Most of them did
not like me, but one loved me so
much that he set fire to my mattress
and made sure that I suffocated in
the smoke. I loved at least one of
him back, though I had reason to
believe that the other six plotted
against me quite regularly.

1. Find a shoebox.
2. Decapitate, dismember, and disembowel stuffed animals. When the stuffing blows away in the wind, pretend it’s dandylion fluff, and you just made a wish on a rather large dandylion. Wish to show no mercy. It’ll come true.
3. Shred all love letters with your teeth. Bitterly spit on each scrap until all paper is sufficiently damp. Mold scraps into papier-mâché bust of your lover’s head. Let dry over night. Set on fire in the morning.
4. Drag mixed CDs against concrete until the pavement plays your song. Crack CDs in crescent moon halves. Stomp on them until the sidewalk sparkles with shards of love songs.
5. Take scissors to all clothing items. Cut into strips roughly the width of your lover’s conscience. Tie all strips together, making sure to double-knot. Saturate in grape juice. Hang in place that you don’t mind attracting insects to. Let the moths take it from there.
6. Paste pictures of more attractive and emotionally equipped people over all photos of your lover.
7. Sob hysterically with regret.
8. Repeat step 6.
9. Repeat step 7.
10. Remember that this started with a shoebox. Fill shoebox with stuffed animal skins, papier-mâché ashes, CD dust, remnants of sticky moth-eaten rag, and improved photos.
11. Dig a hole so deep you can barely see out of it. Climb out of hole. Leave shoebox. Replace dirt. Stomp on the grave, if you didn’t get enough stomping in step 3. Spit, if you didn’t get enough spitting in step 2.
12. Walk away. Don’t look back.

I never want children.
I could never tuck my babies in at night, knowing that someday they would have to grow up and stop being afraid of the monsters under their beds, and that, of course, someday they would begin inviting the monsters into their beds.

I wish that I had one, 

and that life was Pokémon, 

and that you were Mt. Moon

I saw the black ink shrine in her mind

singing the polecat with technicolor hair

as she reclined with heavily painted eyelids

I saw the sensuous scene etched on the screen

preparing to be flecked with bright wet brushes

as she touched her tongue to the tip to begin

I saw the bible with soot-smudged pages

banging against the blinds in her bedroom

as she rubbed the canvas with a black rag

I saw the spill of shimmering viscous liquid

dripping down the tips of her stained fingers

as she shuddered at the sound of the shatter

I saw the string of shining prayer beads

resting on her soft cigarette paper neck

as she kissed the canvas

  “i won’t let her good body go to waste”