By Liam Strong
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mention of rape, SA, language, ableism, references to religious trauma, substance use, blood/violence, slurs
look, i know. my body. there’s not a lot there
for you to work off of. i’m really a bad
person, there’s eighteen burnt churches in my
pelvis alone, & i’ve gotten worse
at returning library books. i’m confessing
again. maybe too much. it’s a first date, my
flesh unsewn like split garlic
cloves. the ceiling, similar to your face,
is impossibly flat. ava klein dies in the novel,
on every page, a music that separates living
from living. we’re dead girls, scream queens
with scalpels at our vocal chords. crimson
bells where my knees once rang. the predator
does this thing in most of the movies that
involves ripping spines out of people
barehanded. it’s a jealousy, the demolition
of a broken, leaning tower. you’ll have to
be careful or not at all. of course
i have tattoos, of course i’m a faggot, of
course they’re all memorials for dead
friends. a cigarette would be less
likely to fuck me up at this point. surely.
it’s a vice i’m willing
to share with you. i can’t thank you
enough. for being torn
into salvageable pieces. my body won’t
like any of this. but i might.
Liam Strong (they/them) is a disembodied genderless question mark and the author of three chapbooks. They died in 2020 and have been writing ever since. Find them on Instagram: @beanbie666. https://linktr.ee/liamstrong666
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