red ink and red lipstick
there is nothing so red and gruesome than
a fireheart, a bleeding heart, striking matches and flickering
on cold white sheets and with your skin white as poetry
(T. S. Eliot's sighs, Bukowski's love bites, a blush red as Plath)
and your bed is neatly made, and my sheets are a field of unmown lilies
and the creases are pressed out, changed,
scarlet lipstick streaks and crimson ink washed away.

I swore-- like a sailor who's lost her heart to the waves--
you could point to your ghosts
and I would burn them with all of my fierce and my fury
and all the fire that I had.

I wish I was your sister that no name nor space could come between
our fingertips, our morbidezza fingertips like Mandarin porcelain
and the space between our fingertips is the space between heaven and earth.