Work Text:
I do not want to be here, I think, as I continue to be here.
This is the trick of living: Do it quiet.
Hide it in your head, fluff the pillows
In the corner where nothing hurts.
Wrangle the broken pieces. Make it mosaic,
Make the tears mortar, paint a good daughter in the glass–
Use your straight-edge. Use your ruler, your compass,
Measure out a good student and mold your mask in its image.
Break your body into lumber. Hide inside the gears,
Dissociate and suffer.
Be good. Be better–
Objective, unflinching, calculated killing
Machine, stomp stomp– wire and wheels that feel nothing.
Kill yourself
over and over like a good daughter,
A good student. You’re ghosts on ghosts, now,
Invisible, intangible, nothing they can hurt.
Shell yourself like an old slug.
Rip the meat from the shell. 4.0 GPA
And climbing, climbing, always
With the climbing.