Venus
by Layla Rivera
I guess people like me don't sleep
Not when there's pressure on your stomach
like a word hanging in the air or
a toddler hanging from the railing or
your arms that won't stretch far enough to catch him
Damn dude you're
Kind of a downer do you ever try to bite your tongue until it's swollen
so you get rid of the obligation to load your serpent weapon and
destroy the village like a breath from a bored God
It really does feel like at the right moment I could
Fold in on myself and sort of
Form this acid collapse
Enough to turn the stars gangrene or to
Burn all the carbon out of the air so
Everyone's a walking outline just sketchy little brushstrokes and sneezing eraser shavings yet
still proud because they're still
lighter than ink
Sometimes under the brush
Buried away from all the
dents in the face of the earth just a
Smooth smothering that comforting consistence of suffocation where your body is freezing but
Your lungs on fire keep you warm
That's all I have to grasp down here and you know sometimes
I really fucking miss the sun
The way swinging on its fingers singed my eyebrows
How its laugh sent ripples through the rings of Saturn
The breath I held when I thought I stood too close to its side of the atmosphere
And the heat of my body burning away sweltering baptismal bonfire I never felt so full
Of happy gasoline
I was brighter cleaner crystal pure to the very last porcelain vertebrae
And now in the static dark where I can't tell my
Tooth from spine or
hand from nail I fill like tiny butane fractures on the world until
The screaming hairs on the back of the earth's neck
Stand straight and swallow
Me in my sunflesh dream