****** is a tough thing to digest, it
Haunts the deepest pit of your stomach,
Steeling food swallowed,
A perpetual hunger.

It crawls on all fours
At midnight
Up the throat.
It's a slow process.
Burning pink, beating flesh
With acid coated paws.
You feel it as a chip not fully chewed,
A pill taken in absence of water,
A greasy grilled cheese.

When I feel it beginning
To swell in my throat
I brace myself
On the kitchen sink,
Notice my distorted, clammy cheeks
In the stainless steel warped metal,
Fingers digging into the pressboard cupboards.
I don't have anything but time
To cool the flame under my tongue,
Inside my teeth.

The building ate itself inside,
Flattened to a lake of brick,
Like a table
Disappearing from underneath shadowed cloth
As the magician snapped his fingers.

His trees in the yard looked like
men standing beside a dead
body wondering what to do next,
With shovel branches
And shotgun leaves
Soaked in ember autumn blood.

I imagine you cradled inside
the wing of your rocket ship, vacuum
sealed, sheltered from the noise of solar wind.
Remembering our goodbye at the launch-pad
Creases the aging skin around your eyes.

Tears, weightless and buoyant,
Collide with the sputtering, decrepit
valves and cogs
tracking your orbit
through Saturn’s dust.

You bottle them in mason jars, capture each one on fading
fingertips like paper white snowflakes,
Sealing them inside with aluminum twist caps.
You fill each one and let them clutter the windows
like drunken periscopes.

If I could shine a flashlight through these memory
telescopes, black and white 1920s movies would reel
cracked turtle shells on the highway,
Four rabbits, their intestines spoiling on mowed grass,
Synonyms for “stupid” piercing into heart with arrowhead.

    You curl tighter into the spacecraft,
    Breathing uncontrollably, painfully.
    Canines cut into tongue to suppress sobs.
    Folding over naval, knees to forehead,
             The gravity of surrounding, misplaced moons
             pulls you to collision with an asteroid.

I wish I had never tried *******.
I wish it was some fresh mystery
Calling my name,
Like Satan seducing a lover, a victim.
I wish I could watch a needle point kiss,
Search under my dress and sink into myself,
Folding over pelvis,
Tell myself I'm ****.
But my voice shakes,
My lip sweats-
I never learned how to lie to myself.

Everyone lies
When they say self love is
A fulfilling replacement to foreign flesh,
My palms are no exception.
They twitch,
My limbs are gangling,
Alien-like,
Nothing compared
to the comfort of your fingernails
And tarnished knuckles.

I try to find the time,
I'm too busy. I'm too tired.
I convince myself I'm perfect for dwindling moments,
But my elbows do not
bend to care for myself
Like yours did.
I take baths by candlelight
With Marvin Gaye and The Temptations
But my fingers wrinkle with water and I weep for my ugliness.
Im hungry,
But I eat before and I feel sick,
I starve myself instead and ***** from the sensation of skin on skin-
My skin.

My skin isn't as feather-like as yours was,
And self love will never float as softly
Above me as yours did.