Baptism/ Ground Beef (No Eyes)

I scrub and scrape and scratch
Trying to reveal
The shiny woman
Trapped within
Disgust
Iron rust
Sunk vessel
She must be there
She has to be there
Bright and newborn
Clean and pristine
Saint John
Hear my prayer
I lather and rinse
And repeat
Hoping to liberate her
Hoping to be how I should
They say a hot shower cures all
But
Can it remediate
The exhaustion of the soul
The looming and fear and regret the
Loneliness and cold and emptiness
I vomit all the bile inside
Into the shower
Foreign, all the words
The pent up
Bottled up
Neatly packed away with a bow
And categorized words
That weighted my stomach
I wretch and heave
And gasp for air
I am suffocating
Far better than to redirect the Oxygen
To that other woman
Patiently waiting below
Virtuous and good-tempered and good-natured
She is everything I should be
In my body
I am carrying in me
All that I could hold but
All I could hold is all
I wanted to forget

And such misery
I find myself so blind in life
I find myself unaware
I find myself when I know not
What to do
Or how to act or
What to see if I could
But my eyes seem stuck
By my mind
Who has trapped myself
Into this house
Of dark, forgotten sins
I feel the sheets
My hands can see
Still, incomplete
My life will stay
Until I have the moxy
To face my fears
And see your self
Which then, itself
Rejects all eyes
And won't be seen
But I can touch
But never know
Just who you are
The light might stay
Or maybe not
I will not turn to look
I cover myself with my own hair
And then I wait for you to leave
So I can come out of my space
Without my fear
Without my shame
I could not lay my eyes
I will not tame
Or experience
That which to me
Is foreign
Buhm