Fingers
Wrap around my waist
One hand curled in over my back
Your headrest isn't solid board and creaky springs
I'd laugh but it would fall flat as
Against the curve of knees over knees and face to shoulder blades
I cushion you. Curled into me more than around me and
We look silly because I'm so much smaller than you

She opens her mouth and sap pours out.
They speak about their desires. Someone who won't leave after two weeks. Someone who won't break away.
I'd laugh but it would fall flat as
I'm the one who leaves after a day.
Isn't that the worst? No. I can think of so much worse. Then they speak about me. "You better hold onto her" and "she's good people" or "don't they look adorable?" then "he stole my cuddle buddy"
Then they kiss.

I try not to move, much.
I'm the reason they stayed.
But the man behind me is better behaved. And he doesn't want me for more than my warmth. And he's never slept the night here, not unless I put him there. So I stay. And I listen to the two on the floor. And feel the crick in my neck start to get sore.

Legs
Wrap around my thighs
One foot atop mine
Your breath isn't evened by force
When I turn to you I want to cry
but it's a thought away from falling asleep
So I fall asleep with you.

I took the sea to brest
Kissed the waves and sipped
Sipped until my lungs waterlogged
In salty sea I dried them out
Plastered algae up and down my legs
Until they bled raw, raw and chafed
And withstood the grain of sand
Withstood the coals and fires of mercy,
Mercy be great upon me
But my lover, you reside nowhere on land
Weary among driftwood longing to crumble to dust
I prayed to the heavens and I prayed not to a God
For Lir is my only and let’s face it
No release comes thence like from your holy brow
In the folds of your wings and your flame
Determined, I waited, shackled into silence
By suffocation I am breathing barely moonglow
That rests heavy on my stomach overwritten by black night
As it is slowly eaten away by *****,
In your name
I was screaming, crying, praying your faith in me
For your ire and your judgement
And redemption from the world wherein I was lain.
You a poesy written in the blood of me
Choking the flow for which I begged you not to
And to hear me, gentle angel, gentle God
Gentle power of the heavens above
To claim me, for I have sacrificed.

I miss you so—
I've been so sad, kept, unloving
Though you used to visit
So many eons ago
It's been empires rising
Sands shifting
My marble hands to flakes then dust
Worrying memoirs and records
You're a pious devil
Reading them
Laughing at our gardens, overgrown
Shaping the stars and commanding them
To burn

Oh! You think so highly of your beard
Lo, that you would shave it for only me!
and the curly brown hair atop your head
Soft on my breast as we lay between sheets
I could write a paragraph on your thigh
the softest of your form
And trail words from clavicle to loamy ***
with poems on every scar
I could strand myself upon your chest
Straddle you there, and sing of each calf
But most of all I love your smile, with edges that cut my tongue
And the lift of every spindly lash
Could you return such prose?
A body a canvas, a romance
No. I don't suppose.

It started with the scarf
Plaid and Disney and good around your neck
Until I grabbed and yanked and felt the fool
It started when you said someone texted you
and I wanted their face under the heel of my boot
It started with German
insults, games, study packets
It started with your crush
Latino, taken, and oil to you
It started with your tears
Beautiful while you cry
Beautiful after working in stables
Beautiful when just woken up
Oh I just need to get serious
It started with the first time I stayed over
It started when we became family
It started when our hearts broke
and we exchanged some of the pieces
It started when you became my best friend
or something more
With little inside jokes and our hands around each others' throats

Now you know that I’m just a borderline
I’ll kick you out when my bloodstreams flow
Even if a firm hand on mine could stem it,
I let you in only to tickle the sinew and marrow
But I love you, true, you’re my only glass case
Needing you to borrow all my pain,
I pinned your wings and made you taste
The bile of my noncommittal pendulum again, again.
Between the tumult of self hatred and desire’s embrace
That dark dysphoria you found in seeing me
Enflamed loss when I left the mire of us
Without a battle calm instilled at the seams
Allowing our hearts in the rolls of our sleeves
We are dangerous.

I met a lover lied. I told him all my lullabies.
But the silence in my heart drove him mad.
Drove him mad.
He said I’m screaming.
Like a little bowl
Echoing off the essence of a hollow soul

So this is still my long refrain
The 1st day of the 2nd month,
I'll turn from the stars and seek Saturn again
And bite the poison lit to my tongue
I'm afraid the shadows are long, racoons quiet in the brush
You better run,
I've outlived all of us
Are you afraid of the sun? Are you still afraid of the sun?
Are you still choking yourself lightly to feel the pain
The women in this family are strong, all the men are dead and gone
I've seen streets die and forests rise once more
I'm not afraid to hide in the brush
My shadow's the biggest of all of us
I'll light it on fire, I'll bring out the light
Nobody's dying. At least not tonight.

I wasn't there, when you grabbed my hand and asked me to listen
I wasn't in the room with you
You saw a woman whose eyes spoke of unending
Then I began our ending, I wasn't there to watch you go
It started when I traveled to Italy, touching stones, forums, dust
Cool running water against my lips
The pictures I took look better without me
I remember saying, so shall you be
But I wasn't there, and you didn't try to catch the longing slipping through the bones in my hand as I faded again,
You couldn't really see me, could you

My words are drying up, one by one by the storm inside
Your words, "I need something different"
"you'll find someone else" added to all the lies
Once promises I'd make a home in
Now I haven't seen the world sober in so long,
Why ask me how I'm doing when breaking up with me
Was losing the right to know whether I'm dead or alive.

Tastes like salty moonlight air, your shoulder beneath my chin,
Heart warmer than our skin under this cloudy lake
I won't tip you over if you won't push me away-
You're always unzipping the tent as I take all the covers
Your lips curve as the chain links painfully acquired
Less oily, smoothed down by Floridan heat and strawberries
My legs beneath the water slick as the wind in Vancouver,
Feet tangled in a fishing net, pushing me up to find a smile between rows of teeth
In countless countries we've marked each other, vandalized concrete sidewalks and people passing by.
But from this quiet town, taking in the mountain ranges, only one thing comes to mind-
It's lost in the sun peeking through, the flip of your kayak,
My rushed escape,
our I'll-get-you-back

"Honestly? I'd just cover that up", he says

Orion's not moving. Stars don't move.
They may die, they may dim, they may traverse galaxies
Change position in the night sky with the seasons
Give me one. good. reason.
To cover up my compass home,
The one good thing, the one beautiful thing,
On this scarred and wretched body?

"We'll put Orion somewhere else, start over"

You're not my mother, ripping out a new piercing
Locking the door on a daughter and her father
Drinking and dating and thinking "start over"
My skin is just my skin, the moles and ink
And decisions are mine to live in
How dare you claim yourself an artist,
yet break down your clientele, your canvas

So Orion's not the problem, sir
It's a debauched attitude toward station
When I follow the stars tonight, I will tell them
Needles have no consideration

Sometimes I feel low, you told me I don’t have to be so,
I text you when I’m feeling lonely
But when the night, slowly fades to day,
You’re just as far away, oh, oh
Give me a break
Give me a rhyme
Give me a response
Before we run out of time
With this clock on the wall, and the kettle on the stove
There’s no other place to go
Love is all that made me feel new
Far too late for we’ve got to talk it out
You just shut it down
Can you find me a purpose?
Can you find my better half
I catch your voicemail a second time,
And I begin to laugh

Sometimes I feel low, you told me I don’t have to be so,
I text you when I’m feeling lonely

Covergirl
Pick me up and use me
Tape me above your headboard
With ice cream smudges and tequila stains
Covergirl
Hide me in the mattress
Say you only have this
Articles and ads
C’mon what else is it there for?
Covergirl!
You say you’ll always want me!
I’m last month’s issue already
As nothing but a side story
Your Covergirl’s pin up shorts and do’s
are so 2002!
Having me is a teen’s first regret!
The one and only,
Idolized phony
Genuine Covergirl?

In an instant I've awoken, I don’t really see the sky
I know rain falls from it on the shingles time to time
Little tinny voices are my alarm set on repeat
And it makes me feel so sorry not to wake up on some
Coriander washed London street
Still the smell, our Petrichor perfume, sitting in the air
Reminds me of our mornings, taking in a winter dare

Where I’d not rise easy to rainfall in the bleak misty dawn
Listening instead, your breath against the pillow I now indent upon

I wish you’d think about me tomorrow, when you’re closer than before,
Sometimes I start to wonder what border patrol does it for
If there were fences, I would climb them, if there were trenches I would brave them,
But there isn’t anything like that stopping us so darling, why create them?

You made “you and I” not exist
And that’s kinda cool in an aesthetic sense
But when I ****** dry your essence
I could taste only me in your skin

You took the chord and chewed it
Tore it with your incisor and spit it in my teeth
Children of the gourd
Children of the gourd
We swim in eels’ flesh
We mix with organs gutted and bleached
From fish in a factory

My fingernail split the cuticle and fell
Curling into your ear
That all you hear of me is mine on a chalkboard
And in a dream my bones rotted
Dancing against your form and encasing you to me
That my touch is nothing but raw and unwanted
I popped your cornea into the pocket of my cheek
Stole your vision for only that of me
That such a vision is now irritating and blinding

Lover lost I blew you away like dust to the wind
Every light popped and sizzled to show mercy
Then I whispered “to the pain” and cupped a vial of our blood
You made “you and I” not exist
But you drank deep until you drained me
And I could taste only me in your skin.

Today you drowned out more than yesterday
Will you ice your lips again?
Will you kiss the mirror, ghosting breath against it
Just to know you’re alive?
Today you almost did it, pulled the silk of water to your neck
And split the seams between your fraying skin
Tomorrow we will sow it up again
But tonight you’ll season guilt with resolve,
Putting both on the steak you gulp down
As greedy as a last meal, one you’d thought you’d never have again
And again.
Tomorrow night I’ll find you here with a blue smile and dented fingers
Gripping the silver fork, as tight as a vice,
As you hope to choke on chicken bones,
And smile so easy
And never think twice.