flesh & blood

kimmy walters

percocet they changed my medication for my headaches it kicks in when I am almost to hebrew class and I think "whoa" and "I am really high" I am repeating some words my doctor said, which are: "we think you probably don't have a brain tumor" I am not pronouncing the words but my lips are moving my favorite word in hebrew means "creeping things" but I can't say the r sound correctly so it feels like something's creeping down my throat I am laughing and trying to gargle up this word I am being asked to use this word to practice conjugating verbs creeping things gather creeping things curse creeping things fall to the earth I accidentally start speaking portuguese then forget where I am gather my things and leave I run home and pull my computer onto the floor and try to find the language with the most beautiful word for "tumor"

secrets 1. in fifth grade a classmate's mom had gall bladder surgery with an endoscopic camera and we watched the footage in class the girl was getting embarrassed that we could see her mom's guts we saw some of her mom's bile and she was upset like someone had just told all of her secrets now I know women who have had hysterectomies and mastectomies just because those parts of their bodies were dangerous it seems like the fewer organs you have the better 2. in college I went to a concert and sat up in the bleachers there was a big crowded dance floor below me and the light was hazy and pink people were moving and dancing and from the bleachers they looked like intestinal villi and all I could think was "there is probably a lot of cancer in this room"

oops when I was in first grade I fell off the monkey bars and landed on my head there was a lot of blood and teachers made me sit down while they called my parents and looked at me like they were scared of me I loved it when the doctor was stitching my eyebrow up she said "oops" and nobody told me not to do handstands so the next morning my eye was completely black and sealed shut and I wore a jean jacket and walked around staring everyone else straight in the eye

flesh & blood my favorite story about my mom is that when she was younger she was covered in warts she tried to burn them off and freeze them off but they kept coming back so one day in the shower she remembered where the first one was and she bit down on it hard and pulled it out with her teeth and it had this big thick ugly root there was blood everywhere and she screamed and a few days later all of her warts were gone I wish I could pull something out of myself with my teeth

when I was younger I fell off my bathroom sink while trying to look at my butt in the mirror I walked around whimpering for three days because I didn't want to tell anyone that I hurt myself while trying to look at my butt in the mirror

I went to public school when I was a kid we were taught not to judge people with AIDS because maybe they got it from a contaminated needle and it's not right to judge people because of that they didn't say anything about judging them if they got it from sex they also didn't say anything when a boy called me a dyke hey public school I kissed this girl who wanted to be a youth minister and in eighth grade when I was supposed to sign that pledge to protect my virginity until marriage I took it outside and burned it then buried the ashes and pretended I lost it thanks for giving me a C in health

+ I HAVE HEAT SEEKING FINGERS +

- ALL OF ME IS ON FIRE - + I WILL TOUCH THOSE PARTS THEN +

lick lick lick one month after I licked my skinned knee I found the same sensation holding pennies in my mouth my mom told me that money was dirty and toxic and I thought cool maybe now I'll mutate I'll be like alex mack I can slide under doors in a thick silver goo and I can sneak out and slide into the creek behind our house and let it take me apart

lick lick lick lick lick you text me "I'm erect" I misread it as "I'm perfect"

the city of san diego is completely beige

when you fly over it it looks like a naked man

they will hook me up to a polygraph and ask me if I love you and I will say no but the needle will jump and sputter exactly how you laugh

you are far away we hang up our skype call and I can feel little sharp things in me like pixels like I am going to cough up that emoticon of the tiny man dancing

my hands are touching each other because they can't touch you skype is like in prisons where you talk to someone you love using that black plastic phone with that thick pane of glass in between you (because your loved one is a violent criminal) (or maybe you are) except on skype there is no chance of watching the glass fog up when each of you press a hand against it the urge to scream "I'm innocent, just let me love you up close" though that's still there

if I took all my blood vessels out they could reach back and forth between us fifteen times

funeral there is something hilarious about the act of burying a human if you ignore the fact that you are also human like "this is broken so I'm covering it with dirt now" the world is ending and so are our bodies get with me baby

I'm a little pepper put me in your mouth and hate it

fuck when I was lonelier I would open multiple browser tabs to that site where they pair you with an anonymous chat partner and I would let four dudes at once tell me how they'd fuck me (what I said was "I'm 21 and female would you fuck me") and it turns out that pretty much every guy fucks the same, or wants to I watched them all talk about my ass while I ate pizza

the next time you see me I am going to be wearing a jacket that makes you imagine me on a motorcycle

stone cold steve austin stunner one day I was sitting next to you like really close and you opened up this file for me (it was your favorite file) it was a picture of a professional wrestling match there were two men tangled up bodily in a way that made me think the word "symbiosis" they were suspended a foot in the air and one of them had a beer can and the beer was streaming out the top in this really sexual way I got my face close to the picture and then close to you and an hour later I was naked and breathless and giggling and thinking "symbiosis" again

one of my ex-boyfriends has a cemetery right behind his apartment building and I'm thinking all my ex-boyfriends should

bye I am looking at a picture of you watching a spider eat a moth you are smiling in the picture

I keep having dreams where you are dead and people say "he was such a nice quiet boy" and cite the way your mouth looked when you smiled it was sweet and a little crooked and you looked so nice like you would never hold me down or would at least be very quiet while you were doing it in the dreams I go to your grave and bring a big bouquet of flowers that I don't know the name of and I take them one by one and get very quiet and push them into the dirt like knives

you, a creeping thing I want to write more about what you did to me but I don't want to be The Girl The Thing Happened To but what you did to me, you and your guns and your naked body, here is one of the things people say about it: if it was that much of an issue she would've done something to prevent it from happening if it was that much of an issue she would've done something to prevent it from happening if it was that much of an issue she would've done something to prevent it from happening this only makes sense if I pretend I am on tv and that there are cameras trained on me at all times you tell me you have a gun pressed to your temple and I remember being in your bed and wanting to run your nails were short but they were in my skin on tv when you call 911 an operator immediately dispatches an ambulance to the scene 911 transfers me to a law firm's answering machine I call again and the line is silent cameras rolling, I invent a new yoga pose where I am the black box in a burning airplane I invent a new yoga pose where I am a temple pressed against the barrel of a gun

I am growing my hair into a cave I can die in

you can contact me here: kaw1134@truman.edu