quiet couplets

how loud can two lines scream?

Fox screaming in the night;
Never louder than the appetite

My voice climbs up a rotted throat;
wilts before drinking the antidote

I am large, somehow too whole. you can only
swallow me piece by piece, slowly

I learnt a confessional stomach can’t hold
enough to save, can't spin hate into gold

I Spill and spill, recoloring dusk until
I am someone else and even still

I find myself writhing. Is this grief
Or is this sacrifice?

I can still feel hot breath taking control of the breeze.
How dare they say it's my fault to me. To me?!

I am not afraid, so I say.
This is not enough deep to drown, so I say.

I'll never again look like the girl they once knew.
And isn't that so tragically beautiful?

Lips stitched shut unravel into my chin.
They ask, “what happened?” but where do I even begin?

My voice climbs up a tinder throat
silenced again by a locked anecdote

Foxes still scream that name through the trees.
Or is that just me?

---

Happy Tuesday!

or just Tuesday, our existence isn’t hinged on our capacity to find joy each day. Sometimes, there is just the air between your body and the next thing. Anyway, we aren’t much Claudia the last few days, which led to us skipping a day of Escapril! Normally, this would paralyze us for a few weeks, then we’d return to social media as an armadillo. This time, I remain un-bummed, focused on the fact that everything I wrote yesterday is good enough to collect in a chapbook. Which really just meant I wasn’t ready to share it yet.

In any case, here’s a new Escapril poem! We are borrowing inspiration from these lovely people today:

• sonja ringo
  // antidote

• Noel Aquino (imandq), B (forgotten.dumpling), and Maria (ml.mecham) // recoloring dusk

• Kaitlyn Sun // sad.magical.girl // confessional

• Bea Lauren Reid // wordsbybea // not enough