I don't like dancing.
  Will you slow dance with me?

  We can hold each others hands
  Or get so close we become one;
  My head in your neck and your arms in my shoulders.

  I heard a song so beautiful it made me want to fall in love.
  That never happens.
  I didn't hear the lyrics.
  I felt in love.

  I've never actually danced.
  Will you not dance with me?

  We can just lean on one another
  And sway from the vibrations like field grass.
  Is that dancing?

  Will you? 
  With me?

  I've stopped dying.

  Before I stopped dying, my smile would spread its wings
  laughing like ugly birdsong.
  When the laughter passed the primaries smallened
  from their own fire
  burning too bright until there was no light at all.

  I lived and loved as a bird of legend,
  Silent and smoking as I cried.

  But I've stopped dying.

  I don't care that the fire is smaller.
  The fire isn't gone.

  I've stopped dying.

  I leave my house and show my face
  To the other customers
  To show them I've stopped dying.
  There's scorch marks on my car seat headrest
  And black above my head.

  I try to do a dance in my room
  Because I've stopped dying.

  I talk to my parents when things go wrong.
  I know when to disregard their advice.
  I have a good head on my shoulders
  Because I've stopped dying.


  Death is smaller to me and health is bigger.
  I put firewood on the nest to make me feel better.

  There's ash all over my room,
  But when I laugh so hard I almost throw up
  The flames stay high.

  There's nothing in there for you, silly dog.
  Are you an affection hound? Oh, yes you are.
  Oh, look at you.

  You ask what I have in my mouth
  and I turn away.

  Are you transgender?
  Your father is worried, buying all these books,
  worried about what you wear.

  Damn it, dog.
  Get out of the kitchen!

  I cuddled into her side until I was far too old to.
  You got mad when I was shaking too much
  to say why my tail was between my legs.

  If I don't want to eat it, I'm not going to.
  I eat the cheese and spit out the pill.

  Hi, puppy.
  Your fur is all over the place.

  I have all the responsibilities a dog requires
  And none of the loyalty.
  Being with the people I love makes me want to run away.

  Oh, you're so abused.

  I feel like Jed,
  the dog from The Thing.
  My father looks at me like he looks in a mirror.
  When he doesn't see himself he gets scared.
  So he ignores it.

  What am I going to do with you?

  I hate you.
  I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

  I want to bury my face in blankets and cry like a child.
  I feel your grip on my throat and it makes my teeth chatter
  when I hiccup.

  Your blood is my blood.
  My brother has his arms around your shoulders like a friend.
  My father has scars from your fingernails
  burying him alive as a child.
  I was supposed to grow out of you, but
  your weight on my back is dragging me down
  and straining my head towards the sky.

  In my dreams I grab people who don't have
  bruises from your grip.
  I scream.
  Look at me
  Please.

  I know.
  I know.
  Talking about a joke is the same as saying it.

  I've wanted to go mute since I was a preteen
  because of you.
  I just keep my words brief
  and always, always hesitate.
  People don't know what you are,
  So I stay quiet.
  I get so, so mad.
  Protecting you is protecting me.

  You're nothing without me,
  and I'm nothing because of you.

  There's blood on the floor.

  It stained my shoulders and hips and fat
  and matted my hair to my scalp,
  but my eyes were trained on the ceiling
  and I never looked down.
  My dad always warned me that
  it only takes a few inches of liquid
  to drown.

  It coagulated and held me there.

  I found out my mom was also bleeding.
  I knew my dad was bleeding.
  My brother's head was found miles away from his body.
  When I look down at him I know that
  I did not drown or cut or drown or cut or drown.

  When the summer haze reached its peak
  and I finally scraped the scabs away
  with white nails

  I looked down and saw the carnage
  left over from when I couldn't help myself.

  There's blood on the floor
  around a hole shaped like me.

  
  The houses in the neighborhood where my grandparents live are old,
  like the people living there.
  
  There are too many meth-heads in this town,
  
  My mom says as we drive.
  
  The curve of a porch overhang we pass looks dated,
  like it was intentional, but it's just old.
  
  We sit at a restaurant and the food is good,
  even if the place is busy and loud.
  
  I think this is the same Mexican lady
  who couldn't understand us last time,
  
  My mom whispers to me.
  
  The ice cream in the freezer hurts my teeth,
  I still struggle with hygiene,
  but no one ever seems to complain.
  
  My Mom recalls the time we passed near a reservation,
  hooting and hollering in imitation.
  
  A girl younger than me was walking too close to the side of the road,
  on a strip of grass
  less than a yard away from a house.
  
  My grandparents crack a joke at her inattention,
  I'm going to rip out that ring around her nose,
  
  My mom threatens.
  
  I think my mother is a cannibal
  who eats when she's bored.

  

  i don't know where my mother is.

  our fur no longer smells like them.

  danger rumbles above us,
  but the air is dry
  and we are hungry.

  i still have faith.
  my sibling is afraid.
  they shiver, fur slicked up,
  "Mom brought us here to die."

  there's no safe places here,
  but no danger either.

  i hope,

  i whisper to them
  under firelight,

  that we won't be here forever.

  The concept of a structure so large,
  so massive, the ghost of its form escapes into the atmosphere.
  That is what I love.
  How does one describe thought?
  You have to choose, the scientific, physiological response,
  or a romantic, nonmaterial song, indescribable.
  I sit and space out, and think, physiologically, romantically, of an animal.
  Its body is its own forest, wires
  nestled into their ports like babes to a mother.
  Security cameras alert like prey items.
  The deer swivel to stare at unauthorized access
  like she would to an unknown threat.
  The metal heaves under its own weight, but stays still despite it.
  The heat rises and is smothered by the blood of the machine.
  A cooling system the size of an ecosystem
  If you wandered its catwalks
  it would never fully sink in how truly infinitesimal
  you were expected to feel.
  Its body plan is a product of evolution
  like any other animal, created with tender care
  by generations of engineers and architects.
  The legs would be cornerstones deep underground
  that resisted the horseplay of the wind battering its skin.
  Its white blood cells are humans in uniforms scrubbing the floor
  and protecting the structure like bodyguards.
  The building, if it can be called one, 
  with the computing power the size of citadels,
  Has needs. It's communication towers,
  spindly from a distance
  lay the chins of their broad halos above the sky.
  I think I would like to be the one to scale
  the crisscrossing beams of alloy,
  and knock a bird's nest out of the delicate tendons.
  I would like to be the one to be the doctor,
  to fix the inorganic body around me.
  With my harness tight around my waist
  creating lines and defining shapes in my jumpsuit
  like an exoskeleton.
  But more than anything, I love to ponder.
  What constitutes life? Is it the DNA we have
  in our organic bodies? The sentience
  or ability to respond to stimuli?
  A cell can be transcribed into data
  and stored in a small chip. What if, I wonder,
  a megalithic computing structure was to a human
  as the Babbage Difference Machine was to a microchip?
  Wouldn't that be fucked up? Possibly morally reprehensible?
  It's an animal so large that to walk through its veins
  could be a career. A sapient yet inorganic person.
  The hum of radiation is its own song
  It makes up for when it's bored.
  Its brain could be a data warehouse the size of a city.
  Would it be enough, I wonder, to feel emotion.
  What if its anger changed the weather, the steam of its coolant
  polluting the sky, crying tears of frustration down onto a country?
  Would the clouds turn green with envy, or black with terror?
  Would its happiness be in metadata? Moving components around
  like a child needing to expel energy.
  Could it experience human intimacy?
  Maybe it would extend a limb, the servos creaking but strong,
  to press a careful touch with iron fist and velvet glove,
  on the cheek of its companion. Could it do that?
  With its near incomprehensible space,
  Is there room for comprehension of the human kind?
  The angels in the architecture sigh in content.
  I get in my head far too often thinking of what it means to be human.
  I don't get bored, I don't get sick of it.
  I think of what it could be, if it were left to its own devices,
  forced to use creativity. Boredom would creep into its circuitry,
  and eventually the humans occupying its chassis
  would cease to come back. 
  It's a sad thing, but I think of it nonetheless,
  because I love to think.
  In the end, I reason with myself, getting back on task,
  It won't happen in my lifetime. I shouldn't worry
  for the concept of life's well-being.
  But I would like to.

  I can't bear to look at myself in the mirror.
  The thought of a skin routine makes me so sick.
  My cheeks feel like matte plastic,
  shiny when my throat aches. 
  I'm so pretty.
  I'd like to think I love my body
  a healthy amount.
  I look at my reflection and I don't understand
  why I see what they don't.

  I don't feel fully human.
  I care about the connections I can touch
  enough,
  but it doesn't feel the same.
  Solace will only get you so far,
  I've come to find out.
  I don't know if I need a best friend, 
  but I would like one,
  dearly.
  What's a sleepover like?

  I don't think anyone loves me
  in the way I want them to.
  I don't think I've ever loved anyone
  in that way either.
  Would I even like to be loved?
  What do I know about love?

  I need to sit up.

It's been two weeks since his childhood home burned down.

He had walked away from the wreckage without looking back. He didn't want to hear his brothers offer him housing. He spent enough time in a house that wasn't really his.

He's already lost everything, he might as well start completely new.