i
                    am
h o n e y
dripped
             across
                       a
                       can
                            v
                               a   s
in the shape of a
banjo, a skyscraper,
the palm of someone
else's                   hand.
when the sun   rises i
am no   longer afraid
to      u n c u r l      my
technicolor limbsand
breathe
    
             breathe

      breathe
like i never did when
i was with you. the
ache i used to carry
in my chest
in my         arms
in my                 veins
has finally subsided,
finally warmed,
finally sealed itself up
to allow for new fingers
to run themselves over it.

my childhood bed had too many sheets piled tall
as a strange boy. I stopped sleeping there at 10.
I stopped talking to mother at 12.
At 12 years old my hair is short and layered as my stomach.
At 12 years old there is a phone call from my father:
I picture him standing then, at the hospital window with his burnt eyes
pleading to clouds that were beginning to shape themselves into gods
he’d never believed in. I picture my father and the nurse, I picture the phone call, I picture me with short and layered hair and a teacher with soft face in a classroom door. Dying mothers I now know are the most loved.
Dying mothers I now know do not use bathtubs and they
do not have wrists. I picture mother with face white like cow spots.
I picture mother with no more milk from her cruel breast to spare (She didn’t want children anyway). I haven’t slept in my childhood bed eight years.
Sometimes when I’m brave I’ll sleep in mother’s bed. Sometimes when I’m brave
boys touch my chest and my stomach and their hands never flicker.

there are boys with hair that makes me nuts
lusting to touch
and i don't know what it is about
copper or
orange or
tangerine,
clemintine, even
rust
that makes me cringe because my body is empty
and lifeless unless
it's covered with soft patches of old skin cells and
must.