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I Am in Love with My Therapist photo

 

Inside abandoned buildings. Tell me, are you a doctor? With your degrees in sex + heartbreak. When you become a doctor, tell me. I will want a diagnosis then. I am a doctor of July mornings. All I can do is prescribe, prescribe. Tonight just got a little crazier. Hey pseudo doc, I must have misunderstood you. Please forgive. I am only human. Or, don’t. There are so many options. Am I the most articulate patient you’ve ever had? Dangling my feet in a watery inlet, praying for sharks. Let a bite be a flirt. Let there be marked teeth above the ankle, a large joint, three bones, a bed. Let the impression scar. I am banging my head against a wall. Anger, what about underneath. How a fault-line begins, as if its own coast. My mouth will not open. No, sitting outside in the car hyperventilating, as if there is someone inside my throat reach reaching long arms and hands to keep it closed from within. Lock and key. Lips and tongue. What teeth.

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Whose hometown are we in in the dream? :: Do you hold my hand or do you disembowel me? Whose side are you on, anyway? :: My confession on this Sunday morning is: we are all human. Everyone wants the same, to be and receive an old hat called love. :: You tell me of trauma, as if I could never know. Hypnosis, repeated. :: What sort of shut down do you prefer: the gradual or the immediate? :: What gnarled machine do you take me for? :: Adjust your eyes. :: What happened to you did not happen to me. ::  If your lover punches a door and yells your name, is that erotic? :: Do you get off on her anger? ::  What color will the streamers be at your wedding? :: Will she wear a red dress when you marry her? Will you wear a dress, too?

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and my hairstylist, too. Basically, anyone who services me for money. I can’t do it without emotion. Don’t get too attached, don’t get involved, so says so says but here I am. Mooning over moon. I don’t want to lie, but I do. I do, all the days through and through. You tell me its good to see you and my heart, sideways. I say nothing because what am I even. Its good to see you, too, I guess, in a sadistic way, in a masochistic way. Here, spank me in public, but do not even attempt to hold my hand. Its good to see you in the way I want to die slightly every day all day long. Do you have a plan? Sure, I have a plan. If I can pay to simply look at your thighs and imagine biting them, what dues.

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Oh, so, you think you’re better than me? Well, I digress, and see you one whole life. Of course you think its a great idea for me to continue abreast this seeing, seeing you, seeing a fuller picture. How much money do you make do you make off of me? What do I get more than the thought of your skin pressed up against my body. I am on the train, girl, watching my reflection in the window, pressing my cheek against the glass. It is warm. Shouldn’t you be sweating or do angels not sweat. Who am I even kidding? How many tools in the shed in the back of your house does it take to rid the desires :: Some water pliers to alleviate my heart, one saw to buzz and break.

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So says the fantasy: I am sure you are perfect in all of the ways one would seek perfection. I am in a museum corridor where you favorite painting hangs, at/tempting fate. Along a pedestal, along such spring, it is impossible to establish a line of protection. I know where you live now, on a street in my head like some impossible neighbor who will not for the life of them clean up their yard. Motor oil leakage, five piles of eight tires each, two cars up on cement blocks and someone living in one of them. Get out, anyway. Maybe I will cut-and-run after all. Why do you want to quit therapy? you ask and I stare into a brick wall as if it's a mirror telling me about gauntness. I want to quit because I want to tongue your armpits, because this distraction is diamond-esque in its peak. If iceberg theory is correct, the ninety percent base never alights. Even if I stab my flag on the top and proclaim, it is still only a matter of time before ice melts. Hello, as if every time I see you is the first time.

 

image: Erin Lyndal Martin


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