sail through your wallpaper into dream sea
they wait for you on their island
rose bushes flicker
with lacing of great spider silks
their everness/ their cricket sounds
coins in unmarked sockets
i am approached alone in night yard
standing still with no one attacking me
i think about my mother
soft airlock door hissed closed
i know you watched me stab him in the neck
the poison spur/ the mechanism
high fae court of pinprick candles
their tiny ripped wings made into my dress
i look lazily at you while i pass
practicing high choreography of hell
you and i could change places
but stealth pope meant something to me
i cut all the images in half
on a long leash i shore up all the fairy food
from the cool damp forest litter
softly i shake them of earth
after everything, discipline is custodial
i was so serious about getting married in hunter rain boots
dyeing skulls on a mcqueen glastonbury scarf tied into a top
a long phantom strides out of my house
marking the inner world with its pace
i walk without you and this wasted garden
is my perfectly rendered floating light level
i jump onto a platform as it changes
into violet sand
into devotion
i’m supposed to stay out here digging up the dirt
led on by my darkening heart, which sees nothing
but, like a pig snout
finds you still
Betsy Studholme is a writer from New Jersey. Her work has appeared in Dirt Child Press, Moral Crema, Bruiser Mag, and more. She is a poet and lover of New York.
