The last time I was in the room with a ******
flowers speckled my hair,
pink as privates, cloud-white. I considered our honeymoon
and thought about how we loathe
sunshine, but would create our first bed on roses
after I have spent five or more years removing her thorns.

I did not know about clotheslines being used
for more than our damp second skins.

She once described it as a construction zone, being the
property of some government
who does not care if it ruins someone's habitat
to build a brand new home. But I do not know if I can say
the same; a house is your mountain above
all hurt, only you
can jump from the top and make yourself bleed.

There I sat and swung on wooden benches,
my most disturbing thought a wonder of how it could hold
me. The sky was supposedly blue,
just now I cannot remember, colorblind of any
possible plane forming smiling men above our heads.

Sometimes, things are not on the tip of my tongue
but still making their way through my
brain-cells. I wanted to lay down on my stomach for love
be a carpet of hair, unshaven legs, sweat beads
until the clouds showed me handcuffs. My
safe lover, agoraphobic, now I can understand why.

I did not think about blankets being used as
shields, or mattress springs made of barbed wire.

If I had known, I would have eaten
my own hair and thrown up every petal on your doorstep,
their broken flower souls, now warm-blooded.

I don't know if I lifted my dress up
so you could smell my grain-stained kneecaps
or notice the new bones
stroking your palms on my hips -

please acknowledge any part of me.

Where the light is almost navy,
we press our shoulders against the wall and I no longer
can differentiate between my hair and his
torso, his fingers and my cellulite.

One of us is a pin cushion
for the other fingernails, I writhe in the motion of
letters that may spell out I love you
(or just, I love your skin I love how your **** makes me
hiccup) his wall
bruises my back and gives me butterfly wings.

We adapt to whatever corner we’re touching
or have come close to denting,
confined to the bedroom not any broader than his heart.

I dye his collarbones with my hair
everything can be black but tongues, he says I should not
smoke because he would prefer if I breathed
but nobody makes me more breathless
by filling my lungs with nameless sort of things.

The shadows turn his sheets into mulch
my flesh into threads: I shift in such a figure it shall
creates twinkling stars out of everything.

He will pull me down in minutes,
when the needles stop injecting euphoria and I can use
my butterfly wings to fly up and down
onto his lap
where nobody can see that I am no longer pure.

here I broke my heart,
no wonder I cannot sleep
at night anymore.

I wanted more than anything
to wash your mouth out with soap and rot
your teeth so no girl
would ever want to kiss you but me.

Told her things in ***** words you thought
you taught me,
but you weren't my first

tongue,
blood, use for a bandage.

-

I wanted to say I had swallowed pills
that hurt more than you.

-

I wanted to adopt lilies
as my little sisters to help them grow with
my tears -

something has
to get fertilized (has to be real).

-

I wanted to believe in fairness, that I'd
done something wrong

wrapped my lips
around the base too hard
you are what I needed so much, perhaps
it put an ache in more than just
my heart.

-

I wanted it to have been loneliness
not desire

(that is why I let someone's father put his
fingers in my mouth
and napped in lingerie his wife
never wore, and his daughter, aged

one year farther along
than me, heard us

me being his good girl, and
her understanding why she never was.)

yet you were not lonely
just painting a still life of two girls
with rubenesque thighs
you had hoped would last forever.

-

I did not want to be saved.

In my throat you have taken root-
The radical violates my lips
Gouging my smile until teeth are broken
Its humid tendrils drop black soil in the cavity of my lungs
The bark of the ***** startled the rabbit
All this reflected in the eye of a raven

Firstborn:
How have I known thee?
Surely it is not our first meeting you and I spring
Come and gone are the lifetimes
Past eternities we have known:
In which we ran naked through the orchards
Sleeping beneath a sky of stars innumerable
A sky still ****** of smoke

I walked in the cool evening
Two dogs at my heels
When we met
I was born and the words were dammed up
The flute of Pan was played as in moonlight we lay
Unafraid Spring and I

Who hath sculpted mountains?
Wind and water are the paint and brush
Stone and flame-Ice and sea
Lightning dancing cloud to cloud
Surely Thor's begun to weld
Upon the anvil of the sky

What is poetry to a flower
A single petal gives justice to a thousand lifetimes
Oh to be
In the vein of a leaf
Or the one running blue o'r your thin wrist

Be still and listen
For a night
For a day
God sings a song of Spring
Love not thyself

There are no calories in coffee, there is nothing in my belly
except millipede fingers and toes trying to
impregnate me.

Little calorie ghosts and wandering pieces of meat,
what is left of what I eat eat eat
insects making me bleed bleed bleed,
one warms my hips
the other drags cool metal against my skin, catches on the
veins like loose strings. I am metallic
I taste it from inside my *****, down onto my feet.

Breaking bones, massaging wombs
coffee and centipede
shards carve out my ribcage when I do not like how I feel.

I deserve to take up space,
he said. (six by four feet in an underground
cage)

mama said I never stop crying,
that I'll still scream when I am dead. she
reserved me a plot.

I have loves who
would be mad I left a note.

I have loves who will keep me their ghost, tear
my white sheet skin
because I never said goodbye.

see my flesh
in a necklace,  hypnotize happy boys
you are getting very sleepy

very tired of
holding onto something half-dead.