Janus Vacations in the Second Circle of Hell

trope is unhinged femme / prevents me from writing / Annie Wilkes hobbles a man because bipolar, because obsessive / Dr. Robert Elliott murders because transgender, because toxic masculinity, because self-hatred / Terri Ardor kills her mother & father & herself because bipolar / script calls for nudity, pulsating desire / calls for personal intimacy with showerhead / in my contract, I won’t do nudity on page / these kinks for me, not voyeur / every allusion to flowers, of course is about sex, even when it isn’t / I’ve learned to love my biggest organ / that’s not a sex joke / sensitive tissue, I’ve opened / lathered scar cream over / hid away and under thermals / why do we press such sharp instruments to body? / tell me without consulting a psych major, a therapist, or a “trained professional” / tell me sometime over a slice and a beer in the basement of Jerry’s Pizza / my least favorite horror trope is abandoned hospital / maybe because several suicide watches on the ward / nurse holding my eyes while I shit / I prefer unhinged femme reaching for heaven / a single oxygen mask dropping from the sky / god offering lifetime treatment / god whispering get back to work, before licking my ear / rejecting forced extraction / tubes hanging from my nostrils, being thrust forward in the wind / tubes scratching stomach lining / an ambulance crooning / lights flashing / in floating, I tangle in these tubes / sometimes, I’m ripping them from my nose like a magician’s never-ending handkerchief / up to my waist in a ditch of sins / just like mom warned me / forever a torrent of cold piss /