Let's spend a week forgetting to be lonely.
I'll fly into Knoxville, drive east
until the roads run out. No one goes
to Harlan County unless they have to.
The mountains are giants, here, they almost
disguise the desolation-- the pieces
of people that got caught
when the mines collapsed.
You tell me to be careful, as if
this isn't my country, too.
As if I wasn't born with dirt beneath my fingernails.

I like how you treat me delicate.
I like to pretend I'm a flower.
You touch me like I'm breakable.
I want to protest that I'm not, but I'd be lying.
Look at me like you mean it, like I'm
the only clean water
you've drunk in weeks. The wells
have been choked with weeds.
So leave bite marks on my back as you
burn the brush.
There is a sweetness in me if you can find it.

Let's drink like teenagers; make sloppy love.
I want to *** at the same time and then lie around
giggling and smoking cigarettes.
Pull the blankets off the bed and trail them
through the house until we've ****** in every room, twice.
Let's build a pillow fort, drink cheap
wine out of mason jars, and then **** so hard
it falls down around us.
I want you to lose hours in me, whole days,
come up for air next Tuesday and we'll
cook breakfast at midnight. You make me so hungry.

Tell me about your childhood, tell me
the one thing you asked for every Christmas
and never got. I wanted
an Easy-Bake Oven. I wanted to play normal.
Tell me all the things you got but didn't ask for,
never wanted, didn't deserve.
I'll run my teeth across your earlobe
and let my hips listen to all the words
your tongue never learned to say.
We are both still just babies.

I like how you scare me.
How sometimes you hold my wrists together
when you tell me I'm beautiful
so I can't wriggle away, because you know
I've never been good at accepting compliments.
I can count the number of nights
we've spent together on one hand, but the months
of distance take more than just digits.
I used to think you hated me.
I used to hate myself for it.

I know the darkness in you. Three days down
in the mine with no canary and me just waiting
for you to reemerge.
You always seem to find your ways out of it.
I like to think of myself as a lodestone; you tell me
not to get arrogant, that being wounded and beautiful
aren't interchangeable, but I believe
they both can make us strong.
I want to write poems with my fingers
on the small of your back,
leave scratch marks as a reminder of
how far I've come. You make me forget to be sad.
You teach me not to take myself too seriously.
I want to be your canary.
Follow my voice out when it gets dangerous.
I'll only scream when I mean it.

Get a little lost in me. Undress until
I can feel the heartbeat in your **** reverberating up my spine.
So run your tongue down
my torso; forget to breathe, while you
Tell me the things that scare you.
Show me your seams. Somewhere beneath
all this rock there is a gold mine, so trace my veins
like a treasure map. Maybe someday
they will lead you home.