What’s that
Professor?
Sorry, I can’t hear you.
I’m wasting my $20,000 education
so I can get drunk
and sleep whenever it’s feasible.

Ooohhh… right, slaves.
Got it.

You are such a beautiful ruin
as if you dropped bombs on yourself.
Ruined like how Atlantis was ruined
and no one saw a difference.

No one bothered to look for a lost thing once so excellent.
Excellent enough to make people say “it was her time to sink.”
We’re a sabotage,
like the song I’m listening to.
Like moths listen slamming their faces against light bulbs.
So dim from standing outside for too long.
Standing and waiting.

Be careful.

Stop
don't move.
Keep away, stay away
keep away.

Be careful.

*"Don't you know
it's dangerous to play with fire?"

"Not for me.
I'm insured."

There's something in a kiss.
I've never been.

The quick cheek
or the lovers racing me to see
how many they can give before I turn green.

And even though I'm not,
I'm always green.

Hands out windows, lips blown.

A soft one,
carried to a small, chocolate-ed mouth
so mom can steer.

On the corner every day, waiting at my red
at 3:30 or 3:35,
not as practiced
but meaning as much as a kiss can mean
at thirteen.

But it must be the hopeful one that gets me most, stuck on an envelope, paused at the box.
No one else waits on toes like she does
or kisses paper
like a person.
Deliberate,
and I can almost see it kiss back.

She lets it go and goes herself
and I wish I was every light
to make sure she was safe.

The girl I talk to in my class

so eager to tell me about her boyfriend.



Is this how girls make friends?
So polite,

most girls don't laugh when they don't know you.

It's unbecoming. 



But when I see the cracks uprooting your eyes

I know there is something there that runs deeper
than your jeans
or your shirt
or your cute purse, 
cute purse, cute purse, 
cute purse.

You are seven years old,
a machine that makes babies,

bought for 21,000 pounds of tobacco.


You live in the 5th line
of the
 75th page
of my 
civic government textbook.


I will never know what is to have

owning hands in my mouth, 

owning hands around my waist, 

owning hands up and down my legs,

to be sold.


You will never know what it is

to sit in the back of a lecture hall

and take your knowledge for granted.



And this is the only moment I will ever clearly see you.

I see it on your tongue, what you taste to say
and it stays there despite my kisses.

You hide it in the fold of your cheek.

It dare not come out,
as if it were like all other said things,
wrapping softly over my face and neck
making my head hot.

The air has heaviness,
fallen questions that wanted to be god.

You were saying something lost in my hair.
Only your jaw clicks.