inter-dimensional lullaby / sleep regression III

Kailey Tedesco

Artwork by indigo c.

Kailey Tedesco is the author of She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publishing), Lizzie, Speak (winner of White Stag’s 2018 MS Contest), and FOREVERHAUS (White Stag Publishing). She is a senior editor for Luna Luna Magazine and an active member of the Horror Writers Association. You can find her work featured in Electric Literature, Fairy Tale Review, Gigantic Sequins, The Journal, and more. For further information, please visit kaileytedesco.com

donning a nightie at bedtime, i die
                once again—cherubs,


dyed golden, come ribboning, tear
                from my face. the lace of my merrywidow


cuts me to shards. some things are not meant
                for shadows, yet still


they asphyxiate, ophelia my eyelids
                blossoms stye-ing.


in the marsupial future i grow
                you within me, then you grow


old & deliver me back from the land

of the dead: a hor de oeuvres
                on a platter, the time of me


murdered & egg-whipped. we share between us
                a secret song, reverse-labor,


collapsing taps upon a hospital table. it was my insides
                that


made a psychic out of eyeballs—mythmaking,
                all the bedrooms of my life


into scabs along my chest. i can taste the wallpaper,
                your nursery muslin,


the inside of my own cheek
                the night before your birth.