she was as see through as her
fish-netted leggings.
she sat on the quad with flowers tangled in her braids
and a book of poe on her lap.
she told me about how his voice at 3am over
the phone sounds like god, and how his eyes
look like jesus; she was a catholic girl, raised
with a bible in her right hand, and a handful of experiments
she thought up to change the world when she was seven
in the other. she told me about the cracks in between
his fingers, and how they resemble the roman roads;
not perfect, but they all lead to his heart. sometimes,
she likes to picture the way her right eye
twitches when he kisses her, and then she
starts to wonder about him and how he
treats her similar to her father but the words
to describe this aren’t coming out of her mouth fast enough for her to think of the next sentence.
“tell me about you,” she asked.
i write poems in the dark hours of the night you talk to him;
i am envious of whatever faults you find in his fingers.
i never knew god, but **** i swear i met him in your laughter.
i see your teeth in my dreams but when i wake up, you’re still
talking to him at 4am.
i memorized the way your foot lifts off the ground when you’re about to
take another step, it’s hesitant but curious, similar to the
way i want to tell you all of this but instead,
you sit on this bed of snowbound grass
sharing stories of poe and not enough of what makes your
eyes twitch, or what faults you can find in me. open your hand,
place it over my black heart, i don’t remember the last time it turned red.