Under My Skin I Am Alive~ By Leah Thomas

I tried to turn my body inside out. Dispelled my flesh and hair into oceans while trying to
procure myself out of my mouth.
I bend over the water with my spine protruding and I become a half-human, half-beast
thing with runny eyeballs.
The shoreline was carved from porcelain.

My teeth ache. A funny thing it is to live inside a fragile shell. I carry it on my back and I
feel it get heavier between my cheekbones.
I am trying to purge the world between my jaws,
and when I look in the mirror I think how hair is actually a dead thing from the scalp
down and the only part of it that is living is under my skin.

Fold me into a skeleton. I do not need this carcass.
Let me get rid of all of this. Let me get high-
let me drink my body fluids from a carton.
It is euphoria that feels good on my tongue
the taste of my own insides-
technicolor.
delicious.
please. I want some more.

Understand that
I am hellbent on this.
I want to implode and
grind my body down to ashes and lick them from the ashtray-
I want to lap my nerve endings up from a bowl.

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and I will teach you how to disappear completely
from the inside out
pull your organs outside of your body-
you have been vacuumed like you were afraid of when you were six.
what color are my lungs? let us find out.

I will rid this place of me-
I will do it with my own mouth.


Author Bio:
Leah Thomas is a 23-year-old Appalachian-American and a student at Morehead State University in Kentucky. She is a terrible dancer.