Have you ever tried to hold close somebody who is crying?
You're so uncomfortable to offer
the impersonal tissue or the personal handkerchief
so you extend your hand, and shoulder, and chest
for it's right atop your heart.

Soon there is snort on your shirt you just don't know of from all the wet.
What's on your shirt is absorbed by your cloth
and is dispersed by its fabric.
There it finds contact with your skin
that is replete with pores that run very deep
but aren't armoured with the right toxins.

It stings- first sign of assault. You deny- first step to acceptance.
Your insides have all it takes to reach out.
So they do. And you, have traded iron for rust.
A binging blood can't tell that.

Your systems turning against you was just the first strand
of the crosshairs as you wrapped around me.
Salty fluid shards of me, inconspicuously stabbing into you.

No one's watching.
Or so he thinks.

Next time
don't give birth
to a child
if you can't
allow one a life.

I like it when sudden rains break my plans.
I can turn my bike around to where I'd rather be.
I like it when my plans, woven in reluctant compulsions,
outweigh themselves from absorbing all the liquid intent.
I like it when hollow expectations, culprits of my plans,
overflow due to complacent nature of futility.

My plans, an accidental pregnancy, have much to gall
And I like it for they no longer stand tall.

I was on my back.
His head moved away, downward,
clearing my line of sight;
I looked with wonder-
more of disbelief-
at a leaf held by the ceiling.
I felt him dig,
“Are you inserting yourself?”
“Just the finger. Look.”

The spaces between my fingers wanted
to fill with the bones of yours with such urgency
that I forgot how cold it always felt

and I could never guess if
it was your skin
or your heart.