december 4, 2016:

i am smoking, my lungs are leaking and my breaths are slowing and i may have taken pills but not without liquor / never with liquor. our breaths clash, like death’s cigarettes. it’s a smart kind-of self-harm. or at least that’s what i used to think. decay and destruction begin to rot in my head like the ephemeral purity ties we call white roses. i used to be the surface you crawl to. i am merely a shadow that leaves you hanging like a dead lamb’s sacrifice. i am but my father’s daughter and i want you to taste your own chemicals. so i cried on top of you.

december 4, 2017:

i keep thinking of you. you: a midnight gem, nocturnal and eating chocolate around two / am, half-dead in kaleidoscopic rooms, you. now i have someone different. you: a silver-tongued colloquy for all the literature they put inside you, nocturnal and fingers inside your girlfriend when the professors aren’t looking, half-human in theatrical settings, you. i only think of the first and best version of you because the second broke my bones, cut us loose and only hoped for the worst. the second version tastes like dried old books in their rough edges, paper cut bleeding trails, and i used to like dried old books. not in you / never in you.

abigail may devhani is a soft-spoken blue-mouthed indonesian who enjoys disarranging words and turning them to art. her other hobbies include screaming and over-looking gay poetry. her work has previously appeared in spy kids review, murmur house, and tenderness, yea. she tweets @outress.