BEE LB

off track

(CW: death)

no one can keep track of the date or the days or the passed and
it’s everyone’s fault. i want to say but mine but i wouldn’t mean it.
i would mean it if i said it was most my fault but i don’t want to say it.

mostly i want to be left alone as much as i want to be spoken to.
i want the string of dialogue to be audible anywhere outside my mind.
i want what’s between my ears to be pulled out or rearranged

or blown clean like hot glass. i want to go back to that last perfect moment
before reality settled down like a cat post-piloerection. did you know that means
the same as gooseflesh. i guess i’m just waiting for odile to come or to feel her pulse

in-tune with my own. i want the person who snuck the thought of doppelgangers
into my head to die but i guess it would have to be at my hand and that’s too similar
to oedipus i could just call it. a self-fulfilling prophecy. i don’t know why chills are the same

as hair raising but i guess i do now that i say it. i guess most things are true once they’re spoken.
i don’t mean manifestation i mean magical thinking and all its consequences. i’m circling
the drain but it’s too clogged with loose hair to go down. i’ve never followed a trail

from its tip to the root in my life. in my life, i’ve mostly wondered and wandered
and lost myself while trying to lose everything else or i guess losing everything
while trying to find myself. once i swallowed a bear and woke in a room the color of tobacco

stain. it isn’t quite yellow, it’s more like whatever’s trapped inside amber once it’s broken.
my john could’ve been a james but he wasn’t. my jacob could’ve been a joshua but
he wasn’t. i couldn’t have been anything other than what i am and still i’m asking why.

escape unwound

(CW: drugs, alcohol, hospitals, law enforcement)

pills waterfall from my hand
into a bottle, my palm struggles to fasten
the child-lock closed, its click echoes
in an empty room. the bottle nestles itself back
into the festival bag it homes in, rattles
other bottles out of its way. the numbered drip
of pills tick smaller in my mind. i garble my plea,
tuck sounds into each slick corner of my mouth,
close my lips, close my eyes. the sharp note
in the base of my jaw hushes, my mind drowns
in its own silence. time unwinds
like an accordion gathering noise.

the new year unrings, folds back
into sleep as the world counts upwards from one.
i swallow down hiccups, the champagne
fizzes itself back into my glass. my brother
spits the distance between him and i out
of the engine. the lights stutter across the lawn
and click off. ashley lets him in
to the trailer, where he trades a wonder for a fistful
of cash. across town, i shove a bottle
into the back of the freezer. i thumb open the lock
trip past my doorway, feel myself pulled
down the stairs and into the night.

i gather myself into the back of the car and sit,
near-catatonic. my breath sharpens
until my chest is a fist clenched around my lungs.
i slip four pills into a bottle and squeeze
my head between my legs. my brother chatters
from the front seat, voice laced tight,
and all i can hear is the black lodge. my mother
reverses into a parking lot, idles the car
under a streetlight. the passenger door flings itself
open and my brother ricochets out of the seat,
sprinting toward the hospital. every alarm in my body
goes off as i crawl from the backseat to the front,
then out of the car, limping and frantic as i search in the dark.

my words tumble into my mouth and i swallow around them,
choke on them, clench around a sob that won’t come.
i reverse across the street without looking, trip in the rock garden,
tense every muscle in my body as my back nears the security car.
my face arranges itself into a grimace that eases into a smile as i pass
the security booth, then stumble through the revolving door,
into the fluorescent halls. my eyes dart away from the exit sign, fix
on the floor. the speakers swallow static and my body stills.

i walk into my brother’s hospital room, cross
to the bathroom and stand, watching water gather
into the faucet. i hear the door close and i come out
shaking. my brother barks unintelligible instructions
then goes silent, his hand outstretched.
i take my sweatshirt and pull it over my head. he crawls
into the hospital bed, looking nothing
so much as a boy about to start a tantrum.

a tear in the seam

(CW: allusion to suicide, mention of a noose)

i don’t know how to keep what i love
the way anything delicate unseams itself

at my touch. age spots spreading
across the trail my fingers leave behind

this is not about the wrongness in me

but i must tell you— there is
a wrongness in me. now that you know

there’s no need
to speak of it.

this is about something else; not a lack
of love, but a fear so big no care is enough
to quell it. & so one pull is enough

to well water from my eyes. & so
the salt clings to my lips & somehow
i don’t wish for sweetness

this isn’t about you, but you must know—

you are unseaming beneath my careful hands
& i am unable to string you back together

become without boundary, spreading myself so far
i’m sure i could touch everything at once if only

i could bring myself to close my eyes to the results

now that you know, there’s no way to hide from it
truth settling around the throat like a noose
if not truth, at least, a delicate perception

so thin as to be seen translucent, to snap under weight

BEE LB is a living poet, or at least the facsimile one; a porcelain pierrot with a painted face. they collect champagne bottles, portraits of strange women, and diagnoses. they've been published in G*Mob, MOODY, Landfill, and The Racket, among others. their portfolio can be found at twinbrights.carrd.co