your parents were right
when they said not to make friends online
because it's dangerous.

don't make friends online
because while your almost-brother
can't sleep for the 159th night in a row
your arm can't reach across half the country
to grab the sleeping pills out of his hand.

you won't even have money to fly to the funeral.

and you'll blame yourself
for the rest of your ******* life
for not being awake with him.

don't make friends online
because your life turns into numbers:
$642 for a plane ticket,
4 states away,
20 hours behind the wheel.

don't make friends online
because you'll fall in love with her
and you'll never touch her.

don't make friends online
because when she has a panic attack,
california is hours away
and you can't bring her tea
and count 1-2-3 to help her breathe
and hold her while she cries.

don't make friends online
because you'll constantly live in fear
that it'll happen again, but on purpose this time,
that she'll give up on life
and you'll have two souls pulling on your shoulders
and you'll cry yourself to sleep
with the same mantra pounding at your skull
i should have been there

so listen up kids
it's dangerous

Sisters: my veins drain into the sand.
My grave exists on wood.
My eyes close.

The crows pick at my womb; my brain.
Each nail tattoos my blood
into my bones.


My dying started long ago;
it started in my youth,
when Teacher told us

boys pull our pigtails,
shove us down on playground pavement
to show their love.

It started in high school,
where bare shoulders blinded boys
from their books.

And now we are twenty.
Now men's fingers pull us into the dark.
Now the alley concrete burns.

Now a suit and tie
asks if his defendant
could see your breast and thigh.

One out of every three;
if we escape their claws
we do so narrowly.

If we flee when they call,
we risk the slice of a knife
or an exit wound

or an asphalt tomb.
Whistles peel at our skin,
the wolves to our moon.

My body is a temple.
I open my womb
to expel all who intrude:

wrinkled politicians with withered pens,
with legalese, God's pharmacists,
the filthy, forceful tongues of men

who chain my worth to fertility.
I drive them from my holy rooms
with whips of cords.


My body is limp on these boards.
My skin is an ossuary
for relics women will soon possess.

It is easy for me to die.
I bleed for my Chinese sisters,
slain before they speak;

for my Indian sisters,
doused with acid,
stolen while they sleep;

for my Saudi sisters,
given a warden,
kept from their own streets;

for my American sisters,
losing their bodies
to others’ strict beliefs.

I bleed, I bleed;
come, stand in the scarlet mud.
Come, bathe your feet,

wash your hands
in the dregs of my end;
come, purge unwanted seed.

Come, drink of my last breath,
women who wear veils,
women who sell ***.

The crows circle,
the vultures too--
I smell of death.

I am not weak.
I will not forgive them;
they know just what they do.


Now, my slaughtered sisters.
Now, my survivors.
Set down your stones.

Take the nails from my feet,
plunder my bones.
Wear them as amulets.

In three days,
I will rise
and forge weapons from your cries.

upon the scaffolding of your bones,
she builds.

where a heart used to beat,
she invents a wild chaos with taut strings,
a mechanism fueled by *******.

she paints the walls of your long-silent skull
with a fresco of desires you never harbored,
vices you never possessed.

systems of ascension are fixed to your spine;
an express elevator, a jet, a zeppelin.
with glee, she crashes each one.

her vision shreds the blueprints.

and i, who walked the old halls,
who knew the sonorous echoes of your heart's hollow,
who learned the secret passages and the warmest rooms,
am powerless to halt her sabotage.

I.

this room tastes like a storm on the sea:
salt crashes in waves
against the soft shore of my lips,
hot like thunder, hard as hail.

drenched, desperate, drowning,
fingers palm-deep in wet earth,
you infuse my blood with lightning,
fill my lungs with water,
pull me under--

a death knell floods our ears,
a furious cradle of waves;
our eyes shut, lashes silvered with rain,
mouths crushed, sharing one last breath,
electricity still humming at my core,
our bodies making
last promises

II.

the current lifts us to the surface;
we clasp each other and pray to the old gods
ignite us, belyse oss, strike us, ignite--

the sky yellows over us
and we taste petroleum on our tongues
and we dig in with fingers and limbs
we absorb each other, we hold--

your eyes are blue as the water
when the wind rips you from me--

ignite us ignite us

lightning breaks the tempest--

bathed in gasoline, we become
two flames in the sea,
inextinguishable.

i need it: the concrete floors
that send electricity through the soles of my shoes,
the ascent up stairs, cold metal under my palm
as lana sings to me and i give her my own words in return
and the pillars of my past rise up before me.
i need the now-familiar halls, the gleam of wood and glass
appropriately placed. i need the embrace of cold air,
heavy with home smells: vulcanized rubber, sweat,
fresh ice. i need my wall, my stairs, my home address: 112, 3, 12.
i need my family, related by blood and ice, by joy and frustration,
by elation and tears. i need the ceiling off its trusses,
the pitch black, the red lights, the resounding bass,
the cold and reverent silence as the bulbs sizzle back to life--
the opening face-off, teeth gritted, fists closed.
i need the smack of sticks against ice,
pucks stinging red pipes, blades scraping up snow,
the crunch of the boards, the red light and the deafening horn,
six thousand people erupting in screams, one entity,
every hand pointed to one end of the rink. i need the urge to
bite my nails, an adrenaline rush, i need to clock-watch,
i need to ***** and laugh and yell and grin, i need to
collapse and breathe when the buzzer sounds, three more points,
closer to the penrose, closer to the ncaa's--
i need hockey.
i need home.

you put the fire in my skin, you
broke me out, snuck your way in,
you ****** me up and made me whole
you ****** the virtue from my soul

you led my lips to self-combust
i gave you love, i gave you trust
you left me breathless burning slow
you kept me close, you let me go

you flew my screams into the sky
like icarus, condemned to die,
you crashed headfirst into the sea,
you realized the sea was me--

i pushed the water through your hands
you called me sea, i called you land
i gave the fire back to you
we can't be one when one is two

but sunlight hasn't hit the sky
so keep the sacred night, and i will
cling to you, white-knuckle tight
we'll lick our wounds and cry tonight

soon
dead leaves, blood-brown, will
crumble to dust beneath my
un-curled toes; september, come
september, come--

my warm skin will divorce your cold wall,
your hot hands, the tiny ridges in your
fingertips, and you will become
a warm shadow - a gated path - a still pulse -
an echo that will reverberate
for years
on every autumn gust

and when i am chilled into stasis
under early october stars, when my feet
carry me home once again,
i will stand behind that pillar
and close my eyes
and stretch my fingers
and whisper into the noise

*i won't forget.