And when I go, I flush away the tears of everything that came before my room.
Before my room, I was a cosmic camper unprotected.
Wake up sometimes thinking of my uncle's face. And in my dreams he's nice, that same face and unintended beard, but this uncle isn't convincing my mom to kick me out of the house—that I'm a toxic person and I'll never make a change, never be safe to be around, that I'll use drugs forever and my mother tells me this, tells me she considers taking me from my room, putting me out of the house, finding me a good home.
In my dreams his is a countenance of gold, looking down benevolently, and when I wake I know that he wants to be like that—even sees himself like that, offering to be my mentor from his Christian perch where he drinks teaches his son to hate women writes evil shit on Facebook makes my mom cry and misquotes Abraham Lincoln. I mean how hard is it to check your quotes before you post—you've got the internet, right?
And in my dreams I know how Russel feels: he sees me toxic and him as God, when the best thing that happened to all of us is we stopped talking to each other. You think when you're a kid that your parents are supposed to love you, shit like that. By 14 I knew that would never happen for me—that's when I locked myself inside my room.
Placed a protective barrier of flea powder 'round the baseboards and ceiling molding. Deleted numbers out my phone and told the device not to bother me with anyone I know. Do you have those people in your life who treat you worse than strangers? That's the worst—getting close to someone just so you can hate them. Get a fucking punching bag, garh. What is it?—familiarity breeds contempt? No shit. It's like they insinuate themselves just enough to switch modes to full suck—vacuum cleaner mode, carving out your insides, chest cavity sanitized of air. Thanks a lot, empathy!—my friend, my enemy, my strength, my weakness—you are the reason I get played.
And on the windows I put mylar and velvet black—no one's seeing in that shit, ever.
A layer of rat poison, molly, and rain water in vats, all blessed with the reversal of a priest, molecular copies of donor sperm in laboratory vials—chalky plastic with screw-top lids—etchings of medieval corpses people who died at Pompeii answers to Latin vocabulary test questions copies of my grades from kindergarten a bucket of flypaper rolls copies of every David Fincher film handheld projectors walking my walls with death scenes from the internet—people getting their heads cut off in football stadiums, stuff like that—and a life-size statue of Buddha don't worry it's not very heavy it's particle-mold cardboard the whole thing weighs as much as my brain.
I like to think I have made a deal with aliens, that they are funding my breeding program and I have been abducted without my knowledge, instructed to breed feti for my friends from the stars—but that ain't the case.
When I was young I never saw myself getting married—I saw this room. Every detail, the cracks in the drywall, the murder I had to commit, and if there are aliens they are inside my brain, pushing me forward, parts of me creating requirements other parts fulfilling them and are there little souls coming into existence and going away just as fast? Am I just a fast-forward mechanism to represent the genealogy of the Earth? Coming and going, coming and going? What do we do here?—Not much. Some people pervert the physics and say consciousness cannot be created or destroyed—but come on. I came into conscious being and my consciousness comes and goes while I live and ultimately it will go away. Russel sitting in church pews will never change that—he's going there to cool his fears, his fears of becoming nothing. But that fear is the fear that arises when one is nothing. Do you think my babies are afraid? They don't have time. They are too busy living and dying to wonder what they are. It's only those in stagnant pools breeding flies mosquitos and Death Nile who think about death in worried eyes. When I slice open my fetus—8 weeks—I go in with the Gerber slice slice slice slip open the chest remove the heart and lungs for my collage (organ-drying station) take the bowels for a spicy treat eat the penis or puss and save the brain for my under-the-cover snack, a sort of night cheese and that whole time there's not a drop of worry in my room.
While you pray for me, I am rising.
The prayer comes back around and kicks you in the ass.
If there was a god, do you think he'd worry about me—or you?
We had to sing those songs as children, too—but my ova screamed at the top of their lungs and swore their kids would never have to. Since I cut their throats out with a piece of string and dry them like jerky, I'm sure their promises will keep. And somewhere, in some town in middle America, one of your close relatives is putting on horse blinders and singing themselves to sleep. That's all it is—your music, weak sermons, your attempts to save me when you yourself are lost. So much easier that way, isn't it?—You praise your white baby put her in a calico crib and make sure she grows up to be terrifically, horribly terrible. And I'll keep the fire pit going, praying to surgery (not even the stars) and my aborted children will have more power against this world—thin as paper and nonexistent—than your plump brainless fatty-fat fatsters.