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[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| Forfeit |

What if I walk through the tunnel at night? Do I forfeit my light? I ask myself despite my hate for the idea that light is right for me. Y’see, the sun burns migraines behind my eyes, bleaches the clouds from the skies. The dark knows when to rise, set the sun in my bones to crystallise. 

[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| Write You Out (Rewrite) |

Instead of helping myself, I wrote flawed phrases and empty words, sent them to you when I knew you weren’t awake, because there was solace in thinking I was only talking to myself. Maybe I should watch the sunrise.

[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| Untitled VI |

I think I found Hell in our Sunday night dinners rolled deceivingly into filo dough and basted over baked chicken. I’ve found it, in olive oil dripping off of your tongue to make me slip on the unswept kitchen floor. This is your legacy.

[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| Look Who Followed the Prompt |

I forget that I am but skin and bone not made of close, dying feathers.

Not the blood and sweat of my mother Not the slipped pronouns of my father I forget that I am not stardust and dittany and frogskin.

I am but skin and bone and maybe I’ll find something poetic about this.

[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| Fuck This Prompt Too |

I’m throwing out the garbage. It isn’t much, I’m a bit of a hoarder but It’s enough.

Just enough to trim that jungle that grows back just as you cut it, but then this jungle is mine and it

it deserves better.

[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| I Didn’t Follow The Prompt for This at All (Rewrite) |

I crave this cold. I beg the Cailleach to inhale fog into my lungs. I scrape at my skin to suck at the icy marrow of cedar and spruce and pine and fir and everything my broken fingers can find a purchase on. Frostbite bit my lips into welts but the blood the blood is warm.

It burns.

[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| I Didn’t Follow the Prompt for This at All |

I hate it when the cold curls in brittle vines around my ribs under my kneecaps and into the callouses of my heels. I hate it when my cuticles shatter or when the mucus of my viscera freezes into icicles to pierce my intestines. Yet I crave this cold. I beg the Cailleach to inhale fog into my lungs. I scrape at my skin to suck at the icy marrow of cedar trees and and spruce trees and pine and fir and everything my broken fingers can find a purchase on. Frostbite bit my lips into welts but the blood the blood is warm.

It burns.

[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| Bogwater (Revised) |

Mosquitos let you dwell among the corpses bathed in swampy moor There was bogwater in your lungs.

Black words that never stung anything like this before, it curled your lips to speak in tongues.

You had vines that sung songs of their own accord There was bogwater in your lungs it curled your lips to speak in tongues.

[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| Untitled V |

I’m hesitant.  To put punctuation. At the end of every line. Because maybe that really means. That I must stop. 

[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| March Ninth, Far Too Early |

This is the weather                              that bites under my fingernails

tattoos fog into the seams of my lungs                              with lingering pine needles.

This is the weather                             that breathes frost down my throat

and never lets me rest.

I roll cedar dust into cigarettes that burns ash                             on the back of my tongue

heady                             to match the melancholy.   

[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| Are You Lost, Boy? (Revised) |

“Are you lost, boy?”

Fear is a hologram. This place is a prison the moss that clings too tight to the crumbling planks of a shipwrecked schooner. It’s the putrid needles that choke the roots of an ageing fir. Fuck. Fear is alone again drowned at the bottom of a deep deep well.

“Are you lost, boy?”

Rust erases my fingerprints left on leather and steel caught in a waterlogged scabbard. There’s a clock lodged in my throat tick tick tick tick tick tick tick against the mucus of my lungs.

“Are you lost, boy?”

No, but I’ve lost my marbles. Second stars ink night into my skin and paint my freckles darker than they have ever been before. Your breath injects skullcap into my veins red robin feather all it takes to remember.

“Are you lost, boy?”

Yes.

[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| A Bad Example |

Partners in crime we built a trampoline in the living room and made out with glitter up our arms. We laid back on newsprint and counted the cracks in the ceiling like they were stars tasting the cheap wine and misery behind our teeth. We raced in shopping carts in fog-steeped parking lots until an overworked attendant chased us away with a baseball bat. Diner seats creaked under the weight of all our dreams worrying into the crumbling cracks of the vinyl that stuck to our bare thighs. Our skin was a Van Gogh painting of bruises and tattoos that we’d stabbed into our flesh with our mother’s sewing needles never mind the blood, never mind. When nights were low, I’d whisper to the hard place between your breasts, your chest “We’re not completely useless. At the very least, they can use us as bad examples.”

[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| Dear March, Please Be Good |

This month I hit a new low ‘Can’t wash the sleep from my shoulders Let’s see how far down I can go An astronaut on the ocean floor.

[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| Like You Know Me |

OR: A Seat For Someone Else

We’ll meet by mistake. You’ll sit down in a seat meant for someone else and take my hand like you know me. Kiss me on the cheek like you know me.

Your hair will be pinned up in great curls reds and blues and pinks. Your lips will be fire-engine red and too full but warm against my brow. You will notice that I’m not your lover not the same fingers you are use to. You’ll notice my eyes, wide with surprise and decide you like the twinkle in them.

We’ll meet by mistake but not mischance. You will breathe an apology that cuts off my own but neither of us will be very sorry at all.

I will decide I quite like your twinkle too.

[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| Cosmonaut (9/10/10/9) |

Do you like the stars I stole for you? sprinkles spun ‘round in your morning coffee ast’roid dust settled amongst the sugar sticking to the bottom of your mug.

Milk stains your upper lip, chapped and split gal’xies in the blood staining the cream pink the drops satellites on the table like they are comets rolled off of your tongue.

The pads of your fingers orbit the lip, the very tip of your cracking cup Судьба не оправдали этот раз* But I remain content here with you.

*Sud'ba ne opravdali etot raz trans: Fate has justified this occurence/Fate fell short this time

[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| Untitled IV  |

and why have i hated my shadow ever since it stitched itself to my feet and searched everywhere for a companion when all i should need is me

[brinks-labyrinth-blog]

| October 25th |

        Gravel digs into your shoulders

         cuts tears into your sweater

Moss collects dew on your cheeks

sponges at the tears that dried hours ago

        Chill seeps into your bones

        clogs your veins with ice

but pay no mind.

        Bluebells wither in the frost

        that melts in the wake of your breath

Your fingertips are raw

scratching at the crumbling macadam

        Your ears red and chaffed

        cold bites at any bare flesh

but pay no mind, darling.

        Wear a suitcase

        under each one of your eyes

charcoal coloring

the cracks in your skin black

        Rigor mortis locks your jaws

        eats cavities into your teeth

but pay no mind, darling, pay no

          Tint your lungs gold

        breathe sulfur into the air

Wind etches diamonds under

your fingernails

        and weaves emeralds into

        your hair

but pay no mind, darling, pay no mind.