darling, do you find me clingy?
you are the first who has stayed for longer then a
week.
you are the first who has spoken to me with truth,
instead of lies intertwined with alcohol and
lust.
so excuse the bite marks, the extensive sighs.
you are the first who has wanted my words,
not the stains within my legs,
or the dampness of my lips.
so excuse my nails that constantly scratch,
excuse the quiver my voice has when you
leave.
you are the first that has said,
“i love you”
and i have actually believed.
you are the first that has said,
“i will stay”
and actually have.

you are welcome to leave marks,
splashes, ink stains, scratches.
make some rough drafts,
until you reach your masterpiece.
my body is your canvas, my dear.
be creative. use blue,
use grey, use purple, use some
yellow for effect.
if you dare, use red.
i won’t complain,
i await your paint brushes,
your pencils,
your chalk.

i still **** my tummy in,
imagine it smooth.
my mom was surprised when i confessed
i was shirtless,
with nothing but my sports bra.
(at least I’m tan)
you say you like my tummy,
and some days I do too.
i still slap my thighs,
imagine scrawny flesh,
stretch marks are lost among
photoshop wonderland.
i’m an hourglass figure, you say,
but I find it silly we compare body types
to glasses, and fruit,
for we are a combination of things,
we are stars, and seas, and candy,
and railroad tracks that sometimes go around in circles until
we *****.
i still see my limbs as different people,
and i wish i could detach them like the toxins in my lungs.
people like my ***,
so maybe that’s why I move it so much when I’m drunk.
people say I’m Arabic,
people say I’m Mexican,
people say I’m Muslim,
but really I’m all of those combined into a mixing bowl,
and one day maybe, I’ll make cupcakes
and swallow them whole.

i had waited too long for today.
heat sauteing upon toast skin.
“you have some caramel on your lip”
trying, with no effort to lick it off,
you kissed it, placing your tongue between
my teeth.
my hands and heart were sticky with melted custard.
summer’s calling me home.

i have grown dusty vines among your ribs,
etches of azure plunging through your apertures.
i could stay nestled inside your brain all day.
the temporal lobe is associated with memory,
so mine must be grey matter with paint marks
and holes deep enough to quiver.
i catch the breath you exhale,
gnawing at your thirst.
in your ribs, i want to remain. in your brain, i will stay.
darling, let’s be alive again tonight.
stain the sheets with every drop of our
humanity,
until we bleed, bleed, bleed,
together.

you were prodding my back earlier,
pressing fingers into knots,
snaking though worries and muscles
smacking palms against coils,
rattling old ghosts and sore tendons
I gritted my teeth.“poor darling, poor darling”
push more, I whimpered
“poor darling
will these ever leave?”
a doctor could possibly,
but I know what she’ll say,
stop lifting, stop worrying so.

I think my demons find my way into my spine,
and they entwine through osseous
but, I want your fingers on my back,
your knuckles thrashing me until I scream,
because our love is like you trying to destroy these
knots;
you attempt to destroy what cannot be destroyed,

and I love you more every time.

he says i’m beautiful, in the morning,
when my hair is a cluster **** of tangles and knots,
when my skin is indented, chaffed from his bristles,
when my legs are beginning to grow the hair that for some
reason is not supposed to ever be there,
he says i’m beautiful, in the morning,
when i groan and shy away from the prospect
of the day
he says i’m beautiful,
he says i’m beautiful every morning,
until, he says, i can wake up every morning
and believe it, too.

“tell me i’m beautiful”