I touch things I’m not supposed to
and call it prayer.
mouth open,
spine bent,
tongue tasting the fence line.

They say longing is holy
if it stays quiet,
but mine doesn’t—
mine breaks the jar and drinks the oil.

They told me I was an open wound,
festering with verse and girlhood.
They weren’t wrong.
But wrong feels a lot like worship
when done slow enough.

They say impure
like it’s a curse,
but all my favorite girls
are made of swampwater and sin.

I’ve never confessed
without turning it into performance.
My mouth was built
for poetry
and plea deals.

I was thirteen
when I learned to ache
without making a sound.
Seventeen
when I turned it into scripture.
Twenty-five
when I realized no one was coming
to carry the body but me.

I keep trying to write
the right-sized truth
but it never fits in a single poem
or apology.

I want back the girl
who ran barefoot into fire
because she believed
it might be heaven.

I want someone to touch me like I’m soft—
even if I’m not.
Even if I bite back.

I want to grab
without apologizing
for how hot my hands are.
I want someone to look at me
like a threat they’d die for.

I want the kind of love
that makes funerals nervous.
I want to be written about
by someone who isn’t me.

And I want to want less.
But I don’t.

You want a softer girl?
Tell that to the altar
I keep burying her under.