your jaw is locked
in a way that tells me
you would rather
tear my flesh
than watch another man
caress it.

you will
keep my blood in a jar
keep my tears in a jar and drink them so
you can taste the pain I felt when
you left

sew a quilt from my dead eyelashes
and stain yourself
with my mascara, melting
under the hot sun of your hometown.

i dissolve in light,
becoming hardly anything
more than
a ghost

so
you will hold me as mist
then wring me dry

so
i can never rain
on another love’s skin
like dew.

we are building a bridge from my bones
just so we can break it.

I have to stop saying your name when I wake up
and start saying it
before I lay myself to rest.

it is not immortal,

I imagine braiding our veins together
then using them as a noose,
feeling our pulses
compete
until they are too exhausted to continue and
              one of us loses

but what
is winning except dying young
anyway. I want to die

to the sensation
of someone tying and untying my veins,
thin bleeding strings, like
cherry stems.

I want someone to mourn me for my *****, I
want to seem as mountainous
as a knitted sweater
where my lovers would have gotten

        stuck in the seams and
everyone will know I am still pure.

on the side, I began to lose years in my thoughts
wondering the naïve things: is this
***
or is it just someone
who loves me even when I don’t push
my **** together. is this *** or
am I fabricating
a poltergeist’s touch with my breath again,
is this ***
or something other than *** that I have needed – I never
believed it could exist. I do not know
of desire, yet am too of age
to be a coquette
anymore
and still *** is all I have ever cared about.
forever, I believed baby pink could
only be the shade of
color inside of me. now I
wonder
is this ***
or is *** not the only thing that can pollinate me

you promised
to introduce me to hell, linked our arms together
like thread through a needle
and i never considered that hell would
be living without you.

our
hours of bloodlust,
heavy breathing for the blush on
my cheeks –
the reminder of all
i could stain with the red beneath.

you knew
the best way you could take care of me
is by destroying me

you knew
i had become addicted to being
cradled by my pain
and
loneliness, so

hell was not a fiery gate opening, a wound,
hell is a door slamming in my face.

at night
i hide my head inside a pillowcase,
pretend it is his hair

and cry hard enough that
against his scalp, it would feel
wet as a french kiss

and
i suffocate and drown

girl, falling snow

I imagine the cold air
brings braille to my skin, my entire body to be lifted
from concrete
and read like a goodnight prayer

blood braids
my hair

cheekbones break and collapse as craters
on the moon

they sink to cradle dust
and atop, feed other little rotting things that do not know
gravity
sticking like a new ***** –

to die from your emotions
is to
finally become god.