plunger privilege

What I’m trying to say is this: I want you to brush your teeth with my old nail polish.

It’s purple. It chipped off into your eye once when you were laying on my bed pretending to break your own nose.

Don’t feel bad for gluing outdated pictures of me to your mirror. It’ll give me just enough time to switch your mouthwash with acetone.

Fill my mouth and throat with cotton balls. Don’t stop until they come out of my bellybutton.

When you realize you’ve gone too far, tell me I’m fine.

“Is that lint?” you’ll ask as I turn blue. “Kinda gross.”

misadventures of a minor detail

I’m a moon daisy soaked in sap.

You’re a puffer fish who keeps trying to fight its own reflection.

There is a cupholder lodged in my gullet. It has been empty for years.

I’m tired of bedtime stories but I’ll still pretend to listen when you tell me.

bath tub terrorist

Your body touching mine will only ever feel like wearing a dirty t-shirt from middle school. I want to take it off and use it to scrape the bad taste from my mouth. It will come out looking like shards of glass I don’t remember eating. It will come out covered in cheap scented soap. One day, we’ll all catch our breath and just be honest. And I almost forgot the great news, ah geez, oh no, how could I. The universe will explode! Everyone will die! 

the current fantasy

Come over tonight. Bring a flashlight so you can see me. I’m always shrouded in someone else. 

You’ll shine the light into my left ear and stare at the ray that saunters out the other side. 

It’ll look sick like poisoned sunlight.

“Where were you two years from now?”

I’ll open my mouth to spit in your eye, but all that’ll come out is “sorry I keep looking at you like I hate you.”

a step-by-step guide on how to consistently overlook the obvious due to paranoia everyone is secretly looking down on you

The flowers in my backyard look like they are yelling.

The bottoms of my feet have never felt this fragile.

I've curled my toes into cramps.

Sometimes when you’ve been burned,

an unfamiliar touch has a way of soothing the sting.

Sometimes it lights you up in flames.

the oldest man on record

“I’m drunk,” you say. 

Your voice sounds like sleepy hollow. 

The Headless Horseman told as a bedtime story in the middle of July. 

“The first time you hugged me, I didn’t know what to do with my hands.”

Whites of eyes meet eyes glazed over. 

They don’t make friends.

Each pair becomes slicker and slicker (first for different reasons, and then for the same reason once they realize none of their reasons are ever the same anymore).

They do this until they both roll out of their sockets and onto your living room floor.

They collide under the coffee table, on top of the rug. 

I want to say something with the voice you once told me sounds like honey, but the honey is just a drop stretching thin before it breaks.

We sit there all night like the lights of fireflies faltering.

We sit there and drip four-in-the-morning dew.

rikki's voice

Popping the lid off a new cherry chapstick, two kittens coming across a fresh ball of yarn, a single candle burning on birthday cake, fingers frantically gripping a ledge, junebugs, ballpits, bounce-houses, the color orange, biting into a ripened peach, sunrays shining through a dirty window and windows rolling down, the dining room of a bed and breakfast, apple juice, lazy chatter, lukewarm coffee with too much creamer, dandelion dust drifting, a seed bursting through soil, wet towels, a fuzzy radio station that keeps going in and out, butterflies being released, the word “sunshine,” lemon starburst, sickly sweet clementines a day before they rot, the last day of school, pumping gas at three a.m., a balloon bursting, putting your feet on the dashboard of a car, finding an ant in your bouquet, laughing with a cold, squealing, saturation, strawberry jam, all of your childhood vacations combined, roadtrips, blankets, jellyfish, confetti, ecstasy, your stomach at the peak of a rollercoaster, seven-in-the-morning-summer-sunrise.