My loneliness makes me taste like toothpaste
because over the course of my shame-polluted day,
regrets pile up like grime in my gums, and she
likes to pretend,
(hundreds of miles deep into the night),
that brushing my teeth for an extra two minutes or so
renders me finally clean, and
forgotten.

She makes me use the peppermint that stings, because
it’s easier for me to picture the rotten remains of my
ugly, fumbled words losing their sticky grip
on the insides of my cheeks,
dissolving in fizzles and bubbles and fire as if in
flavored acid.

My loneliness tastes like hair and
skin pulled taut over bent knees
because she imagines that her set of
tired, unwanted bones fit together
like an awkward origami cocoon enclosing,
(shrinking)
my repulsive, obtrusive body.

And she folds around me
despite the sharp, stabbing aches
in my curved spine and knotted appendages
because we have learned that her skeleton
is the only thing that will protect
me.