She is sunsets and Her laugh is waves
crashing on the beaches you bake your skin on
you layer the sunscreen and tell yourself that She is worth the sunburn.

Her eyes are embers and they smolder, smolder, smolder
there is a hole in your jugular that She has burned right through
She is beauty (roses, blankets, eating food with Her hands),
She is light (candles, thumb­lit match sticks, teeth: carved marble).

She is love.
you can feel Her in your chest
and Her temple worships
that God is a gender-neutral term.
you water the apple tree in her chest,
blooming,
but fruitless.

this time,
only adam
feasting
from her tree of temptation.

hi.

the sunlight behind your ribs
is too bright
for a boy wearing sunglasses.

even though you could drown
in his deep-blue chlorinated eyes,
his heart is not an olympic-sized swimming pool
(like yours).

when it comes down to it,
he will stomp on your garden heart,
and laugh as the petals of your eyes
crumble under his adidas basketball shoe.

you deserve a boy
who will ogle
the marble you are carved from.

you deserve all of the love that you give,
in handbaskets
and hugs
and passing smiles.

stop comparing yourself
to the skinny
straight-toothed
soccer girls
who seem to receive all of the love.

all of the boys have come to be
blonde-haired
blue-eyed
heartbreakers.