my younger self
rains on me like dew – she has given me
a new dawn, and as I awake

I feel
her mist. I want to thank her for
her sacrifice, but she
is too young to understand
that it is a sacrifice. She believes in love

she believes in love
but she
does not believe she deserves it.

still,
she gives warmth,   holding me like lips
******* on a thumb
           – young young young

in the summer before
everything ended,
we went to an art museum
that had entire rooms showcasing death
and you pulled me away before I could admire the human composition
stains, melted into bronze silhouettes, because
what if I thought it looked ugly

what if I figured out
I didn’t actually want to **** myself
and instead just wanted to escape you –

stains of strawberry juice around my mouth I thought of
as blood and you thought of
as lipstick

I prettied myself for
suicide , I scratched maps into my thighs – little guides of where a
knife would go
little hopes that if I saw the death display
maybe I would have known.

for years
it was all experimental. I watched pieces of us
come and go like art exhibits, you watched me as if I was nothing but
a work in progress
that soaked up so much paint I could
not help but look like you when it was through. I was
a child,  was
impressionist (impressionable –

now your thoughts persist
as human composition stains – happily, I am alive
and you will never be dead enough.

you said “you are a woman
but pure” –

I was neither

I was a rotting peach
you opened up too soon, my softness

my sweetness
went to waste. *******

I liked that crowded bathroom
we smoked in,
you held a joint between my lips and asked me to
exhale out the window
into the soft wooden fence between
us and the neighbor’s house. The walls
of that crowded bathroom
were pink
or lilac or something – I liked them
as you would expect,
but I don’t exactly remember
them. I remember my body feeling like too much
because the space was small and I am not;
my skin seemed to billow
out like tulle
to touch yours. Your dad gifted us
two different joints he had been saving for a
while, saying one was better
than the other but
he did not know which was which. In
that crowded bathroom, I looked up at you and
you looked down at me
because we knew
we had just found the better one. We kissed
then walked
out the door, saving half for later.

little lune,
my delicate moon

I wonder
how comfortable
you are inside my womb

we’ll stay up all night
and choke each other with our tongues
only catching our breath when
our mouths are forced into yawns. i will be the

first to fall asleep,
obsessed with the way
you fold your body into fourths
at night
to make sure none of mine gets lonely.

the boy I am sitting cross-legged in front of
shares the same bruises as me
and we create new ones
on each other,
swelling like sweet gumdrops

or ripe fruit. his hands mold me
into a mulberry –
I bleed

sugar and water and sap. I close my eyes so that
it can be a surprise,
the stains I will wear for weeks.

we have loved so hard since we met,
we created puncture wounds
into each other
****** the salt out
then bandaged each other up and smiled at

the soreness.
the togetherness of it all,

opening ourselves up so that the other
can love our insides, too. his
is the burn of incense with the silk of warm
milk,

and I am laying down
in the happiest ache from him
knowing we wear our skin down until it is so
thin that
we can't help but feel all of one another.