girlworm, you grab a wrist like you've known modesty in the shyness of a bare feeling gripped tight on the one offering it tightrope fingers falling into the spaces of unspoken territory, slipping into familiar qualms like the worn lipsticks that fits the grooves of my lips like an object of my affection knowing the contour of what i'm never aware of anxieties creep like an overgrown lawn these fears personifying into antsy women invading my kitchen telling me that there's not enough ventilation and the stove is on leaking gas into the baby lungs of a young smoker and when i begin to argue they give both a look of sympathy and disgust as they say "oh child you drown so easily" so i sit chewing my nails as i count the birds outside flying back and forth from their post as if they can't remember where they're going towards or if there's something that could possibly pull them elsewhere my mind swirls in the smoothie of a plastic cup that sticks to the coffee table, the rings of different bottles painting circles for me to memorize again my paradise sits with the roughness of his knuckles and the ambiguity of eyes that could know everything and i would set fire to the stars inside because of the jealousy that grows from pretty things being smoldered under skin when i begin to lose my person, pale and shivering i go towards it empty stomached and ready to be buried in the clothes of her that i can imagine becoming the consistency of yogurt in my lap kissing back my tremors as i lift up her hair from curious shoulders dry-heaving the importance of the cheeks that feel warmer as they settle on hands that are brought together as if in deep prayer and i know i will collect myself again one day girlworm, you're a swarm in my chest and i am me