You held my head below the spigot
The river dangerously near its capacity
Told me to drink you,
'cause you’d do it for me
So I did.

I was asking God to give me a sign
Just between us, two – knock over the glass,
I wouldn’t tell.
I learned that God engages only with good girls
Who don’t
go around giving out free milk, like my mother said.
Girls who lactate only after they’ve been whitened
and rung -
Whose milk nourishes, full stop.

I found the cavities in my skin early
I dug them deeper -
I wore infection like a veil yellowed with time
Over skin undefiled

'I'd rather learn from my own mistakes than from Jesus''
I said,
when I was made to swallow the wafer
that bore my name

It's true
I'd rather ache alone than be made to love anything
God doesn't love women like me.

Who's the hollowed apple in the road?
Who's dug your insides out, left you owed
Love and time -
Maybe we can fill you up with sauce and sweet things
Reclaimed wooden wings
You won't fly, but they'll fit nice

And we're here to watch you try

i know love in taking’s wake

i know no love ‘til my pride is abused

then i know the saddest love, remorseful love
shame misplaced and mispicked

i’ve taken residence in a home already owned.
i’m an orb of light in the corner of your world, a nameless presence.
chipping paint on your railing, silent love.
your spirit curled and clung to my bones,
you stayed like a stake in the soil.
i’m proud to keep you here, upright in the sun.

the longer and farther away you are,
your image browns in my brain.
your skin fades,
and i know that to reach your core again,
it would take so much of my time, biting away at the rotten parts.

you live there,
behind inches, then feet, then yards of softened pome -
the acid pool ever growing between my mouth and your core.

you breathe,
once more,
to give love its name,
you are the mother who dies in labor.

you died on a wednesday, we celebrate you then,
every wednesday, at 2 10′s,
we became closest then.

my face is filled with salt of the sea,
you are singing, and skimming its waves
heavy love in your wings -
i reached out my hand,
with brilliant feathers, you flew away
‘it’ll always be like i said’

your body asleep,
i felt you in the hands of your man,
your mother.
the earth lost its detail as i scaled the tree,
it grew fat and blurred,
its nuances enveloped by shades of grey,
i never touched it that day,

but i felt it in their palms.
i pulled my hand away to inspect your muddy traces.

when a boys dies he lives a few scattered moments longer per person who knew him. he dies, and yet he is still alive, as the words leave another’s mouth “he’s gone.” he’s still alive with blood and bones and spirit there. every piece is still where it belongs.

the words travel from mouth to brain and it’s there, in the language, that he dies. and it’s no one’s fault - he is gone, he is dead. but from then on his life is limited to the sculpture the people he knew are capable of creating. so people remember him on and on, he was tall, he was kind and smart. they frame the same photograph over and over.

people are afraid of the bad, the spear he ran past as a kid and screamed as it tore his thigh open, that shrill of his voice, the day he dented the wall with a mere elbow's tap, the pieces that made him more than a thoughtful still life. his life is more accurately described as a vignette of horror and beauty.

yet those who survive him meet someone new in his passing - they meet the flawless portrait of a boy, who was only a boy, a beautiful boy.