that's it. right there. oh yes.

the collapsible boy has changed positions. torso mashed into accordion. plans to leave his nowhere, all spent and emptied on your knee. fuck off already. listen. the hum: the buzz:  the soft vibrato, the creak of plastic when he folds in half, tongue pulled from the grave of his mouth. his hands, his hands with their four thousand holes each collecting the light from a different angle. 

the collapsible boy has a long, boring idea about love. his twisted position making sleep sit up all night with her eyes taped open, watching him touch his flaccid cock. okay so that's it. what it is to be under a weak sun sky faded yellow, burned, smudged with ash. don't you love the way you can walk down yourself? again and again. your curved, spiral staircase of a body. how sexy. what i wouldn’t give to run up and down that body. the rooms of your mind are all softly padded with carpet. do you hear that? in your second head from the left, yes that one, just near the very edge there’s a soft drip, drip, drip, tssssp, drip, drip, drip and then so much nothing, which is loudest of all. at the end of the hallway i sit with my knees together—i have to piss but i can’t get up—picking tiny nails out of the carpet.

collapsible boy was my first friend,  a king from nowhere. i love it there, have you been? they called me a wicked woman, my eyes brown and joyless because the light doesn't flicker like other people's, their irises cozying around a fire. mine, i have to scrub clean again and again with a scouring pad. their glassy containers foggy with longing, scratched windows caked with please please please please, but they don't cry. wild small beasts, pathetic boring things. 

the collapsible boy isn't real. but you're afraid of him, aren’t you? his cross stare, so hungry. bony hands, too-long legs, folded torso. the way he sinks into a little button when he's sad. you sew him into your coat,  needle through thread through needle through thread. it's raining.

collapsible boy drips down the edges of your breast pocket and you've lost him. size of your thumb, and you've lost him. so now there's a problem.  collapsible boy could drown. he can’t breathe in there like that all smothered by himself. this is the second best way to kill him.

collapsible boy argues with the thread that binds his body but it doesn't move because it doesn’t love him. it's thread, what do you expect? stupid fool. you could will as hard as you want, collapsible boy, but thread is only fucking thread, after all. 

i search all night for collapsible boy. touching the gutters, hard and cold, fingering their safe edges. the dark ones. corners. spit. gum. my fingers touch it all. the inside of so many mouths. every so often:  crunch. but no reeds, no organ, no accordion boy, collapsible palm boy with two soft hands full of holes. my feet are bare, every time i see something the size of a button i'm compelled to crush it. don’t ask me why! i mean it. parts of bugs cling to my soles like blisters.  the last of their machinery flickering, humming, dying slowly. my skin, the final strange bit of nonsense to understand.

collapsible boy rolls down the hallway of a dream. you are sitting there undoing your shirt,  button by button.  your lover is licking your nipples, you are kissing her palm. in this way, collapsible boy has found moan. and moan curls around collapsible boy, touching him, touching him. the thread less sticky once it's dry. his arousal snaps the strands clean off his button holes. he bursts with a tthwwwwp.

thats it. collapsible boy is a man again. 

i find him flash across my head at night, woah, oh, oh, god, oh fuck, oh yes, collapsible boy with his head under my foot. only goo comes out. coagulated like dried blood. i mix it with water. drink it, chew the pulp. his tune is like doo wop dooo doo doodoo dee dooOOoeoOOeoodooo.  

it's fucking annoying, actually. 

collapsible boy has no harmony. he's just an instrument for gods sake, what do you expect?! he needs someone to play with him. he needs someone to touch, touch, touch, suck, suck, suck. when i fuck him with my short freckled hands, a blurt comes out. he twists his naked body into my mouth. blow. blow. blow. finger. blow. finger. blow. finger. jazz coming somewhere like possessed fucked up tape loops hungry for their ends, chewing, spitting, gargling. it’s backwards. somewhere a worm is eating its other half trying to find an extra heart. desperate to know what it feels like to be a cigarette butt, ash, red hot cherry, line of cocaine. pushing through the earth until legs cut clear holes in the side of the body and the worm becomes the worst kind of arachnid. disgusting, man eating widow, heartless cunt with a curvy body, her sharp legs twisting around her mate. eating, chewing. haunted jazz, pipe organ. a timid trumpet. empty the spit valve and again and again, pouring it on my chest. soprano fucking alto so hard collapsible boy is a saxophone and he keeps wetting himself inside his little body, how pathetic. so sppttfff spptfff comes out like a disgusting mouth sound two young kids would make. real ones. not collapsible ones. the kind that take the bus to school and then home and then school and then home and then soccer practice and then skip it to smoke a joint and then fuck each other and then church and then home and then nowhere, end of the line, turn back, scream all night until your throat splits. everyone feels it when this happens. it’s one of those things. 

i break collapsible boy in two. his insides are weak with owww, that hurts. ouch!  don't fucking touch me. collapsible boy is out of tune. his eyes open for the summer sun, burning the edges until blood pours out of my skull. i'm laying in the grass,  petting my life with one hand, collapsible boy disappears like a dog in the night and finally finally finally i can feel the edges of a soft blade of grass, i can blow blow blow, kazoo. and finally the sun drips and drips and drips burning holes through my bones, keeping me here in the middle of a frantic morning sickness trance gasping masturbatory fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck i can’t move.

collapsible boy is ticking in my chest, his stupid fucking tempo. it’s all wrong. i'll look for him later. squeeze his tube body until BURST—quiet! there's a small little harmonica climbing into my mouth, her legs tripping one over the other. vffuuuuuuvfffffuuuvuffffuuuvvw

fuck you, collapsible boy.

your sonnets and soggy wet tissue cock, you did nothing for me. my mind is a glove i snap off and chuck in the garbage. biohazardous bullshit mouth organ. i pull a spool of thread from my pocket, embroidering pentatonic scales into my upper lip. tiny beads of blood drip like

doooweeedooodeeedoooloooodooooowidiwodiwodioieieeiellooeoeoeoe

and what the fuck is that?

nothing nothing nothing comes out right! the world blooms into a cloud, popping rain out of her skin like a pimple: splat, splat, splat, splat. you are soaking wet, that’s all. come in from the cold. climb up that ladder to the place where the roof has a mouth, ceiling fan whipping water at your eyes until you’re blind. tuck in. chew the edges of your hand until they make a sound. fuck. sleep. dream. die inside the tin head of the collapsible boy, pathetic song ringing ringing ringing until the birds peck out your throat, show you how it's done.

tweedle dee da dum.