1. |
autoflagellate
03:51
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I feel you in my head
tiptoeing like a spider
you captivate my ear
though I know that you’re a liar
lash your whip in silhouette
keep your whole face covered
carve deltas down my back
drip the shame to the mouth of the river
I know this bleak biography
and its many ghostwriters
you read it to me every night
from cover to cover
feel the boils burst between
the peaks of my shoulders
I try to shut you out
but your voice only gets louder
for as far back as I can remember, this voice slithered into every waking moment, telling me these horrible things. eventually, I searched within myself, seeking its source. and sooner or later, I realized that voice wasn’t a sworn enemy or a jaded lover or a devil on my shoulder. it was just me all along. I had become my own devil. and that was when I started to heal.
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2. |
drone (collared version)
05:00
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what’s my name?
where do I belong?
when did I surrender?
am I my own?
or am I owned?
who will stop this bleeding?
who will stop this bleeding?
she smirks at you from across the room
eyes like darts targeting your heart
and with a toss of her rope
she begins to reel you in
her pull like a velvet gust of wind
buoying your virgin back
soon you’re nestled together
breath melting and sticky sweet
when the words first burn
like firebrands
and the sinking sands cave in beneath your feet:
“you’re mine now”
the collar tightens its serpentine grip
you claw with ragged fingernails
scraping for breath
drinking your last swallow of air
but the trap has already shut
your vision narrows
and a weakness creeps into your limbs
like novocaine
she has seized the reins
and pried you from the driver’s seat
and no cry will waver her favor
as she drags you, ragged,
bonded, chained and broken
I used to dream of better things
days of honey, days of sweat
until I felt her netted wings
curl like corsets round my breast
now I torch that bridge behind me
shred those shackles like a knife
I was once a hopeful girl
now I’m running for my life
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3. |
rising oceans
04:03
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4. |
eclipse
03:24
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of all the things that I counted as constant,
the sky sat as the base of that pillar
until one day I awoke
from a dreamless repose
and I could see it no longer
but instead beheld
a terrible emptiness above
hollow horror clasped my body
until I remembered then
that I had consumed it all
moon and sun swallowed like morsels
stars inhaled like scattered dust
into my swelling chest
chewed, digested and transformed
into the swarming cells that comprised
my corporeal form
and there was no warmth left
to stoke the trees or bake the grasses
but no matter
for I held it all within
ever jealous, ever full,
and never truly alone
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5. |
what she left behind
06:57
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n the heart of the city, in a nondescript apartment, a girl lies silent in her bed. Her sheets, rainbow-hued and disheveled, cradle her body in quiet repose. Cars drift by like phantoms on the streets below, their engines’ gentle drone the only sound to disrupt the night’s ambiance.
All is still save her chest’s rhythmic rise and fall and the paths of dim headlights snaking across her ceiling. Until, as she begins to wake, on the far wall of her bedroom, where none stood before, a door opens.
***
The girl’s eyelids flutter. Consciousness floods her like water from a burst dam as she awakens to a room bathed in goldenrod light. The door stands agape, facing the foot of her bed, and in an electric moment, panic jolts the remaining sleep from her mind.
She rises from the sheets, letting them fall in ripples around her. The bedroom, spartan in decor yet comforting in its familiarity, appears otherwise unchanged. Before long, shock abates into curiosity, and she approaches the portal undeterred.
***
As she reaches the doorway, she begins to contemplate what ties her to this world. A humdrum job. A tiny apartment scattered with mementos of half-remembered experiences. An ex-girlfriend whom she'll never speak to again. Distant family. Distant friends.
In a moment, these thoughts flash through her mind like an old slideshow. Then, she grits her teeth and, without further hesitation, takes her first trembling footstep across the threshold.
***
They found her empty apartment weeks later. All was as she had left it. In her bedroom, the door had vanished, leaving only bare, china-colored drywall in its stead.
And the woman? She was never seen again. In her stead, she left behind naught but a basket of undone laundry, scattered food rotting in the refrigerator, a telephone filled with missed calls, and a creased handwritten note, written in hurried script, that read, simply: “goodbye.”
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rachel underspoon San Diego, California
Deep in the heart of San Diego, a non-binary trans woman frantically pecks at a keyboard. These are the sounds that she generates.
she/they : synths, guitar, vocals and samples : no gods, no masters, no genres
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