The calendar reminds me I have not kissed you
in too many days
I am dissolving I am sugar in warm tea
or the herbal flecks drowning in a floral mug

dying in a pretty place.
Even when it doesn’t rain, you are
shelter

and I am a rack for you to rest your sweater
when it is too warm to wear it

or when you want to press our stomachs
together and
pretend I am carrying your baby inside mine for
a laugh, for some kind of wish.

I want you to touch me like less of a child
recognize I am fading
into an unkempt lawn where insects

will find me before you know I am gone.
I love bugs for letting me wilt into the scenery –
I love you for not
and will remember the last second we touched.

I want to exist in a month besides December
when the trees are not naked, but I am
and still my ******* are budding blooms –
still, the adjacent skin takes the hue of a rose
while sunshine arouses me like men do.

Tied your hair with my tongue
into a little knot, a twisty-curly braid
and your pores turn to flecks of
pink sand when I make you blush.

Raising your shirt, I see lace sheets
where the hair on your chest lies:
found an everglade of dark and light
transcribed on your body’s duvet.

The skin you pull over your head
every morning, hiding salt from your
dreams of me hidden in a blanket
and being leisurely ****** to sleep.

Looked like some creature ate
flesh from your shoulder, a bit of you
and dried the blood with their lips
when they were finished ingesting it.

I never want to be touched again
not by you, not by maggots eating my corpse
but they do and you do. I am swallowed

like a jewel or the tiny voice that tells girls
to do bad things. Shimmering, my lilac eyelids
open and shut, separate and find each other again

but it will never be like the first time,
the best time. I can never feel death more than
once. I want everyone to **** me but I want

nobody to touch me again.

Gave me a locket with your name inscribed
there are little rubies on the side, a white gem in the center
and it lays right across the ******* you ****** slow
in my bedroom’s night.

The moon came through the lace
curtains, you came inside me. Both looked like a shadow
against the walls of something smooth,

untouched, virginal. It was Christmastime but I was
not cold when you slipped my ******* off:
felt like I had warm eggnog swimming around in my belly
and your handprints on my bottom was holly wrapped
around the tree, your ****** hair mistletoe hanging.

This locket says your name,
it says that I kissed you and you kissed me. It says before
winter could end, I knew you tasted like cinnamon
and you knew I come like vanilla gumdrops.

Thanatos broke the paradise and gave it yellow skin
but when slit, his peel hummed like an opera
just beautiful enough to make me fall in love with him:
moon set and guts gouged from death songs sung.
How his eyes are melancholy orbs, storm clouds
and his chest has not hair but scales that shed to stories,
the final sunset he found as a father in doubt
before noticing me in a scope and his son in glory.
Now he walks less ugly through esplanade and field,
singing through battles that eat him to wounds.
When he reaches me, on one knee he has kneeled:
a proposal has no purpose for us, so he passes his tune.
    Is death a mission to bristle our love?
    Thanatos, my one and only, is an angel above.

Girls have beautiful legs and men have beautiful hearts,
both I love to squeeze, both I love to open
hide my gold locket inside like a ticking bomb:
I use the chain to lasso arteries and muscles for me to chew on
but the necklace unbolts for a souvenir collected inside.

It could be the curly hair of his shin, one wisp from her neck
I previously tugged on with my teeth. I performed
open-heart surgery on a man and open-leg surgery on a woman
both called me back to say a second goodbye
and I wonder, I wonder which farewell will be the final.

When will the mementos be massacred
glued to a comatose form, deceased into an emotionless resin?
I could amputate their limbs and turn off the pacemaker.

Twenty seven months of sunlight showers,
and I am still white –
can he pull me into vinegar?
Make my skin peel into another shade?

No one will recognize.
Our relationship is an oasis, not on a map
but I can spread like an ancient one –

used to being fingered and opened,
garden is a home of myriad wedding vows
when the wind gusts, he feels a promise
touching concealed cartilage

of his ear. No one has spoken so low and
has been heard by anyone even if
the feeling hangs like ferns from a rooftop.

And our body, our single form
hums in a similar silhouette with him above.
No one can amputate his seed from me:
I keep growing into last December

open a stitch, in you go
find places others do not know
we are in a cardboard box or emergency room
but it does not matter, I want to *******

and so we will, we do
like two siblings figuring out body parts –
without meaning to be, you end up hard

something like this has to be okay
burying remnants of yourself inside me before
the rest withers away

and even when you’re old
I will let you have me on the floor

He called me his little good girl:
it was less of a compliment, more a command
that if I did not follow every order,
he would tell on us. I had to walk with his limp
so he would not derail my secrets, make

my boyfriend mad. It only worked because
I was acting like a bad, bad girl
with someone old enough to be my dad.

I remembered he could put a gun
down my throat if I misbehaved or wore a skirt
too long or too short, too pink or too black
or if I seemed too happy or too sad –
good girls have no emotions, just let men take

their breath away. I panted under my sheets
and I came to the thought once,
soon after, this man, he made me bleed.