your hands are calloused from all the nothing you've done today
and you are tired of looking when there is nothing left.
screaming these things at me doesn't accomplish much,
but we are a family, so i let these things vibrate through my spine
and i let them loose into the air.

'you don't have to take everything so personally.'
you're right, i don't.
i obviously choose to have my heart spew at the seams
from all the swelling, pride and sadness
engorging me and i'm always ready to break.
i do it because i love you.

i want to taste the darkness
hidden in the folds of your eyelids

is it normal to want to consume someone wholly?
things rise so naturally in me:
urges to bite you til you break
and my throat yearns for your marrow

i bet you'll bleed wine,
and i'll hold your neck to my maw and
crunch the whole bottle,
cork and all.

by now i understand you cannot own a person.
there is dust left on a pedestal i saved
for someone whose eyes were less
crystalline than mine, whose affections
were not bogged down by sewage

the ghostly coating layers itself like cheap paint,
boldly going where no one wanted to go with me.

i leaned my head on your shoulder while you told me
about "those lazy wetbacks" again, the ones you ran into
at the bank (with your car) and i laughed because
i didn't know how not to.

i grew up a painted-white fence. wood naturally brown
i drowned myself in bleach so my words would be pure,
burnt hair my fault. black eyes my bad
for being born, i am sorry

we are taller now but never any smarter: sure,
we act empowered but really there's a pacifier there who
just wanted a face like us to say
"you're beautiful, not burnt"
i pretend it's a lesson learnt

i'm not your lover or your friend.
i'm your crutch: your time machine
to tenth grade and dragons but
no dungeons, they didn't let the girls play

i knew our skins would absorb one another
and i never touched in fear for colors
dashed and blinding, killed.
i want to die an icecube, still

have you ever had a young love grow old?
your words are archaic and covered in mold
there's a hint of affection, still
i'm afraid that this time i'll ****.

i try to wring my veins of all starlight
to sweeten your tea with, but there’s simply
not enough andromeda. i am unchained of rock
whittled slightly but never disdained by crashing wave

vous voulez un petit fleur, no es como yo
i am not to be picked and toyed with. i lay cards on
mats but they are not for the future, only for a self
fulfilling prophecy of broken bones and soot

i’m sorry you don’t have perfection with an apron tied round it.
sorry enough to lay salt on your grave so no green grass
ever grows, and dance on it to punish the crystals
deeper so you can feel it where you are

i tried so hard to be a winter reed, mother.
tape didn't help--couldn't be a wallflower
despite a tendancy to make love to wallpaper
(something about the pursuit
of insulated happily ever afters)

i tried so much to be an iron fist, father.
i crumple like aluminum at schoolyard bullies
my baby instincts faulty, it's flight or falter
(if it's any comfort to you
i have no love. too unruly)