A fortune teller at Venice Beach wearing green eyeliner, holding bits of sand, took note of my ever-present suitcase & warned me that because my Venus is in Scorpio I will always be an obsessive temptress doomed to misery.

I can lie to myself and say that these men mean nothing, but that’s what therapy is for. And I am that woman who has seen Death’s made up face looking back in the mirror, honey. And I am the woman who amended the memoirs with a bibliography & sewed up my skin with thin black thread after giving pieces of myself away. I still have the keloid scars to prove my humanity, as I compile lists of who was and wasn’t & who my mother should have warned me about.

It’s time to murder the good girl with knives from a street vendor, in a Hollywood sacrifice. No one wants me to be witty or morbid, but pure hearts are eaten unabashed at the local diner along with strawberry milkshakes & I don’t want the delicate parts to sting. My relentless traits are at odds with finance & meaningless sex but Retrograde is moving into my facial tension & contemplation in the ruins of my eyelids. The sharks are chomping my good girl at the throat & I don’t want her to suffer a prolonged death.