[NEUROTIC LOVE BABY] ❋ Marie Conlan

This work comes from the collection [neurotic love baby], which was shortlisted for The Metatron Prize for Rising Authors.

Thumbs like torn paintings. Eyes like ponds stretched over the plains of the middle
west. I keep drinking from this earth & ending up in your eyes. I keep clawing at this earth like I am
unscrewing your spine from you your fucking spine all broken I climb your vertebrae like stones I
throw them like stones away from you get that body off of you it hurts it hurts I almost lost you to the
government I almost lost you to paroxetine I almost lost you to Chicago I almost lost you to the
highway I almost lost you to a dream & where’s your god damn bones now pull the boot straps we’ll
run we’ll run we’ll run

Sometimes I am sending you an embrace from your dead
friend in a dream & when I wake up I know you have had
this dream too. You never remember the embrace.
Sometimes I am taking you to the doctor’s office. Where
does the blood come from? The dream. I awake inside my
hand. I am very blue, and tucked neatly behind the
smooth valleys of my knuckles.

Way down me go. Hands clasped around so tightly.
Press harder. Make space between my skin and your
skin. Press with a heat that is welding. Harder. Sever
the new oneness & repeat again again again & again. I
want to know my separateness while I can. Know the
one do you understand. Do I explain myself well.
Press harder. Again & again & again.

bullet jammed almost lost you & before
I climb into that and [?] You said defeated but
did you think it funny at all how
big you

to eat the crumbles to paste to
wake the sleeping to sleep
against the sleeping to be late and
necessary to hold your keys out
and demand an opening to fit
better when poured with water to
push out to exit to expand inside
of the exit to believe in the ability
for arms to rise and over the head
and keep and forget your
telephone on the carpet to be
deliberate to know the best
feeling in the world and forget
how to go there to know the way
and forget anyways to

We hold very still and let our time & space fabric baby catch up. I
push the aloe over, I push the gravel to the other side of
the driveway, I strike your small hair. We have never caught
up, we have never caught up. My blood moves from left artery to
kitchen flood, my nails grow from cuticle to ripped crescents, your
hand to my ankle & we have never caught up, we have never
caught up.

When I hold your grief it sews a red thread into mine.
Knuckles are hills, if you want to salvage this.
Crawl up & try to find eyes.
Every choice is so big.
& you you you you