what is dead must die again

may 17, 2025

this piece is the ‘track title’ for this collection and is so very dear to me. okay i’ll say it, she’s my favorite but don’t tell the others. this collection, “what is dead, must die again,” feels like a debut and a homecoming.

i’m standing on hundreds of dead bodies.

the pile so tall you can see the peak of the mountain that i’ve tried to climb, been trying my whole life to climb. how many times i’ve tried o let me count the ways. how i love you, o let me count the ways. i love you so much i’ve killed myself for you. will dead myself again, to find you, reach you, love you, become you. see, all my corpses and all my skeletons. see me ache and scratch and claw to put myself back together again.

i’ve killed every version i’ve liked,

every version they’ve liked. i’ve rebirthed myself, nurtured myself, parented myself. i write myself today, i don’t like what i’ve written and i erase and start again. my hand is cramping and my pencil is dull. and i keep writing.

i’ve been born again several times since i left my mother.

since i left my mother

since i left my mother

since my mother left me.

since my mother left me

god, she left me

my mother,

she left me.

and i might never recover

there’s the version she liked best, i killed her an hour ago and will probably have to kill her again tomorrow. there’s the version of myself my father liked best, i murdered her last week and when i did i cried. i wailed like a woman who hasn’t been allowed to cry in years.

i’ve killed myself over and over to be here.

i am an oak tree who had to start again. it’s cute when they call it pruning. pruning sounds like a haircut. these bodies i stand on, there was no pruning. it was a culling, a massacre of body, mind, and soul. i did not go gently into that dark night, that version of myself fought to stay alive, fought dirty, fought like my mother did for my father but never did for me. fought with manipulation and seduction of what might have been, could have been but never actually was. i call for a scalpel and for gauze and i cut it out.

there is a version of myself

that i am looking for and

i will not stop.

i’m standing

on hundreds of dead bodies

and i’ll stand on a

hundred more.

.m