these photographs stole your soul for a moment
when I could have clutched it in hand,
I opted to observe you under glass
and right now you are in bed, I am in bed too
but there is another realm where you are
captured by pixels & we are sitting side by side.

I want you to hurt me

I want to be reminded that I am never alone,
that hundreds of bacteria are following
that plants are alive except when they brown

I want you to ****
every little thing that is wrong with me

I want the wallpaper to peel & drape over us
while we touch I want to
reveal the ugly parts of everything else

I want you to unzip my dress
and tongue where my spine ends

I want these moments to be enough for fairies
to permeate my intestines with glitter
so I can look pretty when you break my heart.

There is a place for me somewhere
and it is in a room
where your toes curl, retching
out of desire.

I envy the blankets that hold you
when you are asleep,
you crease their most innocent places
mumbled secrets into seams.

I feel I am an alarm clock
waiting to go off, to watch you rise
for morning air to bite
your skin uncovered once again.

I do not need a place in your heart –
rather, a seat in your bedroom.

you don’t face me when we sleep
and I lie awake, composing couplets of it
then you palm at my lips and mumble
secrets                   I wish I would have kissed you
that night in the rain I wish you would have
  
kissed my toes when I pulled them
from their dripping socks and laid in your bed.

we come up with a hundred excuses not
to touch but I see lost love everywhere and resent
not bringing it to my breast  
     the lonely hate the fulfilled because they

  are kind of dead          we pile our emotions into
the bathtub until water dilutes them to fine
powder                      we build concoctions of

not knowing what the opposite ***
feels like even they’ve purpled my heart with
a bruise and cannot sleep in bed with you
       he whispers        I wish we would have kissed
so you were not lonely I wish you were my toes.

I still taste like April in the month of May
and he crossed December as a state-line
long before I knew that time could be a place
but it is beautiful being ahead of the game:
catch the curls of autumn, snowdrop waves
make me prefer honeysuckle eyes anyway
they make me want to become his May babe.

I make my feelings into poetry
and you make your actions the same
when you lollygag in rainstorms &
leave love notes written on my face.

And two parts of my body you
make damp, my cloudburst eyes and
what lies between my legs’ land.

But in the afternoon, I’m reminded
that the two are not exact
because only one hole of mine can be
                                                   sad.

I want to turn you into the cotton slip I wear
under my skirt, suffocate you in my tight spaces
and give yellow perspiration to your pink lips.

Limbs wrapped around you like a head, the frill
of a sunflower flaccid in autumn moonshine:
oh, feminine stars, you say. I am in a dark place.

I have become a river and I will eat you up –
admire the open field, the sore meadow and if
you can’t sleep, remember you are in my dream.

Where you still trot southeast without being
connected to my dress seam. You could go back
home but I would rather you stay warm in me.

His body
   is a water tower & it holds
   gifts hidden in the bowels, wrapped in
   intestines like a cherry-colored ribbon

     our words fall into
stardust
  and he has black coffee hair
  
dark tea skin
     been there since he was an infant
spoke tongues, the language of romance
         but I was hidden under

   the bed
until virginity was okay
until he coaxed me out, a prophet man

       his fingers knead me
dough
to be a perfect flavor of snow & sadness
     fill his empty corners to the brim.

my hair is sticking up like weeds because of the static:
when god calls it sounds like white noise
but I feel my veins cramping
and a man shoves himself between my bones

sleep on the breast of dead shrubs
will they swallow me? I am
a lamb and my blood is holy to the ailments I have

will you destroy me?
just to see my bowels absorbed by foliage  

please know I am in a better place now I will be a tree.

said “I have to feel you I have to feel you”
and so you touched my nudeness
and you touched me again

until you found my heart whispering lullabies
to the other men
who found themselves under my dress.