i have stopped bringing roses to the grave of the girl i used to be
i burnt the clothes i was taken in.
this takes up so much space inside of me
and this air is the only place i can let this trauma live outside of my body
i am now afraid to wear my recovery too publicly
because it was the only witness
i didn’t want to write a statement or file a report
i just wanted to take a shower

i just wanted to take a shower
soon after my applause of ‘victory’ my voice was hushed
i have noticed people stopped calling me victim and only started calling me survivor
when i stopped talking about it
i was questioned over and over again because after years i slowly began to be comfortable with the thought of a free voice,
a voice of my own
i took notes on which ways to pronounce ‘****’ without having other people be bothered
they ask for proof as if my eyes were security tapes
and when the footage is lost he is innocent until proven guilty
but so am i

yeah maybe i’m crazy.
maybe i’m crazy to see a world in which my healing is not brought along with an eraser
but i am not ******, i was treated in a psych unit because of what was done to me

i will not be interrupted.
i will not be spoken over.
i will not become someone i’m not just to please the ones who look over my shoulder and start giving suggestions.

in some other life, i can hear you
 breathing: a pale sound like running
fingers through tangled hair. i dreamt
 again of swimming in the quarry 
& surfaced here when you called for me, a voice-only my sleeping self could 
know. now the dapple of the aspen
 respires on the wall & the shades cut 
its song a staff of light. leave me—
that me—in bed with the man
 who said all the sounds for pleasure
 were made with vowels i couldn’t
 hear. keep me instead with this small sun
 that sips at the sky blue hem of our sheets
 then dips & reappears; a drowsy penny 
in the belt of Venus, your neckline nodding
 slow & copper tinted as it bobs against the
grey stained velvet of my car. what a waste
, the groan of the mattress must be
when you dive below my essence & pull
 the night up over our heads. your eyes 
are two moons i float beneath & my lungs 
fill with a hum your hips return. 
it’s sunday—or so you say with both hands
 on my chest—& hot breath is the only hymn
 whose refrain we can recall. and then you 
reach for me like i could’ve been another 
girl. you make me sing without a sound.

let’s kiss at a red light
glow overheating the sparks of black
you grace my lungs
lungs of blue and red and blue

a beetle sinks into the grass
and you notice-
you notice the crinkle in my nose when my laugh gives an echo
how my eyes begin to fall into the black when we’re laying
alone, together.

how a body grabs a body.
hungry.
its sharp. its ache.
its nectar. we’ll
build a fort and fill it
with maple trees gone gaudy
with cobalt wishing stones.
we’ll crawl inside and imagine
how maybe we used to laugh.
the hum of incandescence.
the lips we nurse begin to burn
in unrequited alleyways. We count morning                             
stars falling for their target audiences. We aren’t 
to blame for shots that pan from bare bed to window