I have divided myself in two.

My centipede spine has leached my body dry as white plaster, and I lean on the bathroom sink with a weight that could snap my wrists. The hands are not mine: blotchy arachnid fingers on the porcelain, forearms knotted with veins, my hair stuck in the drain's gaping throat.

A black hole, brittle to the core.

A bent neck letting the head hang limp on the hinges, drooping down to make sense of dual shadows below.

I am double.

I am brutal as the dull heat between shoulder blades.

An invader, vacating autopsies and snaking into the form of a stained-glass angel. Ready to inject a new strain of myself in the back of a brain, a tunneling dream in spider veins,
to twist heart chambers stiff as a pipe organ.

I am half.

Wax skin sinking in at the sockets of wide bloodshot eyes.
Blinking and blurred--

too rotten to have honest intent.


© Alexandra Wollinka