Full Moon

for Anne


Live or Die.
Line up these pills
these medicines
little chemotherapy conversation.
I’m a girl in nothing but a nightgown,
wandering down a busy street,
across a busy bridge
and into a forest full of wolves.

What else is there to do
when the moon refuses to break
through the inky clouds
when she won’t let me touch her
when I need so badly just to touch her.

When I was a little girl I started sleepwalking,
bumping through the tiny house,
getting tripped by banshees that have been locked in the cabinets

now locked within my ribcage,
making my brain scream.
Sucking up the food I eat
so that I’m still hungry
and my stomach rumbling
keeps you up at night.

I scratch like a Napoleon
at my legs, till the blood runs in little rivets.
My teeth and hair are falling out.
So what if I have gone mad?
Little Allyson Wonderland,
stealing from my betters
and worrying about my pulse, my overworked tired heart.
My wine and pill filled belly,
my hazy lungs
my yellow fingernails
that will continue to grow even after I am dead,
twisting through my empty ribcage,
filling up the coffin like an angry vine, breaking through the wood,
and tunneling through the dirt, just sharp enough
to poke through the frozen ground, and get back to the moonlight.

I already drowned.
My torso is pregnant with water,
my skin if pricked, will leak
not blood, but tepid water,
dead fish,
soggy bones.
Inside we both smell like dead animals.

You know that even with all your distractions,
that you are the same as me.
Meet me at the harbor
I will be the Little Queen
and together we’ll begin the year without words.
The silence will save us
now that the pills have failed.