please be impatient with me for I am Female, Age 19   Please be impatient with me.  Three quarters woman in a body, a quartered quartet.  The crying viola, off tempo, present but unavailable.  The boys want me. The men, more, more.  The women most of all.  The American Girl dolls on the shelf dusty, witnesses to all my demander’s impatience to take, to own, possess & desire my poses all to pleasure them, wanting  many morsos (small bites).  
Then, when discarded, my body reeks of
con-f u s i o n.  A perfect conjugation,  an imperfect conjunction;  Conning my mind into letting my body be-fused.  

The dolls weep real tears in the city of my mind;  flipping out, they too, are impatient with me, and flip me off for they have no good words to express their utter chagrin.

You are dead and you made us in that hospital.
     That lump of flesh in the pit of you: clay.
          With your hands you grasped it, pulled into yourself: mouth:
umbilical. Like a snake consuming itself. This is what they mean
when they say that circles are perfect. The water
     was warm. It snowed outside for days. I visited
my sister
and wondered about brains. She speaks of her therapist
as a friend.
                       I speak as if I don't know I am
a person
                  and imagine
the rush of light in each of our heads. The heady fire
revealed in MRIs. The showerhead can barely contain the steam
and nothing cools me off. Back to our younger years
                                             in the libraries
when we were still constructing ourselves. You said
                                                            ­                such lovely things
that when you died it felt like deaf. I can no longer

     hear

you singing. Except now, I grasp
at the hard body of a psychology textbook, reading,
some exam tomorrow-- listen, you could've come to Harvard, too,
if that is what you wanted, if your body would let you-- and your quiet
suggests the problem is that I am stuck in the frame of my

nakedness   cross-legged      bottomed

laughing     souped  into the bottom

of the shower curtains: and they open: the steam: the still

images of sliced brains in my textbooks: coffee-cups

emptied by the lips I have taken from you: quiet,

yes, no wonder why. When your hands

did their last thing,  when they reached into your own mouth
to spool yourself into you and the books we sent you
that you couldn't read because you were dissolving
                          
                           ­                When your hands

did that: did you think: could you: and if
                                          you could: do you
                               think
that was what made you: you the whole time?
Or was it: the departing of the air: as if to sigh:
when it gets so cold outside that every whisper:
feels monumental because: you can see: the clouds:
you speaking before you: before: your own eyes.        And then you blink

for a very long time in a single still flutter, stuck.

Her tender skin sprouts
green shoots
a wreath,
at the foot of tree
she was buried.

On the trunk
her face appeared, a
morphed stump.

The bark, her coffin
split, where demons clawed.

A number, worms out
indelible scars, 452.

Frozen chambers of mortuary
await the next,
a child, a girl, a dalit, a musalman.
A cattle herder.
Or, the silent you, you and you.

the police radio is
screaming
like your mother-
(never has)
but i didn't
hear you in the
background

and when
i went to
see you
you wore a hat
to cover the
bullet wound
above your neck.

and you didn't move
even when i cried
(for you)
(because of you)

and i cried because
death
is supposed
to be beautiful

it is supposed
to be a
collaboration
of fungus
and blackness
that ends in
a teardrop.

death is not supposed to hurt (me)

it feels like
the first time
that i fell in love
because

when he left me

a part of me was scrambled into the pinpricks of the night
sky
(and i haven't been the same)

when he left me

i couldn't breathe

because he could knock the wind out of me
with his eyes (stareheavy)

and when you left me

i couldn't breathe

because you were my  
breath.

and because now

when i breathe
i think of you

and my throat betrays me,

like your trigger finger betrayed you.

friend, please,

when i sit above the circle of ash,
(that was you)

spin yourself around me until once again -

you may be (yourself) my lungs.

the other day we were in a
bookstore in the mall
and my woman said, "look, there's
Bob!"

"I don't know him," I said.

"we had dinner with him
not too long ago," she said.

"all right," I said, "let's get
out of here."

Bob was a clerk in the store
and his back was to us.

my woman yelled, "hello, Bob!"

Bob turned and smiled, waved.
my woman waved back.
I nodded at Bob, a very
delicate blushing fellow.
(Bob, that is.)

outside my woman asked, "don't you remember him?"

"no."

"he came over with Ella. re- member Ella?"

"no."

my woman remembers everything.

I don't understand it, although
I suppose it's polite
to remember names and faces
I just can't do it
I don't want to carry all those
Bobs and Ellas and Jacks and Marions
and Darlenes around in my mind. eating and
drinking with them is difficult en- ough.
to attempt to recall them at will
is an affront to my well-
being.

that they remember me is
bad enough.