[ethereal whooshing]
i.
my organza sleeves raptured
off me the day i made my pain
into something separate. here, bloodspill
& sword-wound tourniqueted
on the feast-table, twisted off like a loose tooth,
& contained as sculpture of what could
have killed me in a
minute. my tongue velvets itself
in worry, chrysalised speech
waiting for the bloom-seasons. it was
on this day, all those years ago,
that the carpet leaked out into the boxwoods,
extinguishing the garden quite
entirely.
ii.
from the dictionary:
house; a building for human habitation —
gone humanoid. the sheetrock
sprouts limbs, arachnid. in the films, the house
is a character — a swoon, an irritant.
i’m in it. someone will stab me thrice
in the general vicinity of the heart & my house will
catch flame behind all of it.
my friend’s dear mother
hired a medium, but her dear mother didn’t need a medium
to know my friend had been sleeping in her own bed, next
to her own ashes in a vase of silver.
now, the card pull:
heartbreak; betrayal.
please, dear haus, lick my wound.
iii.
what is it that you’ve buried? from the dictionary: haunt; (of a ghost) manifest itself
(at a place) regularly. it’s breakfast time & the place
is weeping for an omelette. i speak to the wallpaper directly:
“sometimes, i feel like falling & falling & falling. it is then that i must
force the arms of the floor. it is all that’s left to hold me still.
sometimes, i escape the place in a vehicle. i drive & drive but my bloods turns to
candlesticks, then curtain rods, then floorboards then wall studs & i’m
back like a sepsis. i cannot see well, anyways & so the road
disappears entirely & i think the house is absolutely the only thing
that ever was & so now i must eat it.
Kailey Tedesco is the author of She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publishing), Lizzie, Speak (White Stag Publishing), and the forthcoming collection FOREVERHAUS (White Stag Publishing). She is a senior editor for Luna Luna Magazine. You can find her work featured or forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, Electric Literature, Nat. Brut, Black Warrior Review, Fairy Tale Review, Bone Bouquet Journal, and more. For further information, please follow @kaileytedesco.