after Diane Seuss

Years of pelvic floor therapy and I still have to stop everything sometimes
to make sure I don’t piss myself, nobody ever tells you these things, Oh
don’t get gang raped you’ll be on the verge of pissing yourself for the rest
of your twenties, sage advice although it went unfollowed,
even now the mawkish smell of the attic somehow finds me, I do not want
to inspire pity so much as revulsion, I want people to despair
like I despaired when I couldn’t run, could barely walk, each stair
a newly unwrapped razor against muscle, now that I’m back I sometimes think
I dreamed it all, how horrible, I could never
live like that, but I did, people said If I were you I’d kill myself and thought
they were being kind, it was batshit, I had a boyfriend for a year
but the entire time I was too sick to fuck, it was like he was my beard
or something, we lay like unwed Mormons because he was afraid to hurt
me, him with his shirt off, me pantless, together we made one person, clothed.

Fuck being a poet I wanna be a TikTok chick
          who never says what she means
for fear of going unheard   un
                                               -alive, sewer slide, that’s all poetry is
          anyway, crass euphemism, sidling
                        up to a stranger and smirking You know
what I mean as if conferring a
                                              tiny curse or secret handshake,
like prostitution but worse, cheaper,
          unsolicited— my medical debt got sold to collections
          last year so now
                                I sit and let my phone ring itself dead, pennies
                                on the dollar I’m assuming but
          I’m dying to know how
much my suffering is worth
          in retrospect rubbernecker in the thick
of my own wreck—
                                don’t get me wrong I’m still beholden
to wants can’t clean my teeth without
                                           sticking the brush into
                     my uvula and making myself gag I mean
          after all these years I still don’t know how else I’m
meant to feel clean

5 Central Ave.

Found you in the bathroom at the
      house party, sky bruising over with new sun,
drunk, crying. When you came

          back downstairs, you didn’t speak. Up
the street, your old apartment, with
          rickety windows and no

insulation. Came to my conclusions,
          left you alone. Bought flowers
before you died, then after, sleeping

      in your bed to smell you, stuck in
remission, bending to the crowd. Their
      fangs shone as they called your name, beds

leaden with the timeless sin of the
          living. I’m a man on the moon in this city,
never not thinking of you, cemeteries

          muttering your name, me humming
along, learning the words. Yes, I’m
          learning to live again. The world is wide,

only my skin between us. Lying awake
          in the place where you died—it’s
brutal. It’s a gas. It’s morning.