For three years
I have been dirt under your nailbeds, no one’s gotten
close enough to see me. This skin
is a cage
and I know how everyone looks to you

sticking to you in some place, the green goo of
a dead firefly or
an old sweater hung by shoes you no longer fit into.

Your mother is not
from America, but is a mother yet –
I am not from her, nor am I foreign to you.

She watched us in bed together when you were so ill
you thought you would die.

But mostly she saw how

I put more fever
on your cheeks – I wished I would die
for you. No one would miss a crescent of filth you
touch them with or loose hairs
on your sheets. No other girl would notice.