spinning stars on my fingers, but they are amputated
before I could get callouses or cigarette burns
like daddy gave me when we hiked through woodlands
and meant to urinate in shrubbery not on my shoes

years we were consumed by the distance of each other
but he could not have scarred me on purpose
or I would have known it was meant to sting a little

sleeping in blackness but wondering ceaselessly
through conversations in which lovers are not obsessed
if I do not wring my eyelids, juice the retinas to bed
figures dance and they are ghosts of rifles he has  

us children **** the very barrel obsessively
until the trigger flicks our tongue, soon I smell smoke  

black and white and the disorder is somewhat colorless
there are sparks but rarely a single flame to see
just the bruises spitting **** slapped into skim milk
and now, some relief, I can do all the slapping myself.