Pelvic bone to pelvic bone
We are fused together.
Some type of warped conjoined twin syndrome.
Chin to chin.
Lip to lip to lip to lip.
Our lips are touching but we are not kissing.
Cheek to cheek.
Fingertips scarping against fingertips.
There’s a theory in physics
That states
You are never really touching anything,
Only the space in between.
Sometimes I think we are the very definition of this theory.
We push closer
But we never touch.
I cannot feel your kiss pressing up against my neck.
I cannot feel your teeth tugging at the skin on my collarbone.
I cannot feel your saliva intermingling with my own.
You are sitting next to me on the couch
But I do not feel
The bend your body makes.
I do not feel the dip of cushion.
Your hand is nothing more than
An anchor keeping me grounded on Earth.
We are perpendicular lines
But it feels like we’re parallel

I write a lot of love poems
Even though I have never been in love.

This is the irony I brush my teeth with.

I bruise easily.
This is seen and treated as a curse.
They think I am an anemic girl.
They think there is something wrong
With my inner chemistry.
They have thought that since I was six years old
And refused to read.
Now I bury myself in books
And poetry that tastes like dirt.

Winter was made for people like me.
People who feel
Personally victimized by the sun
And can’t breathe
In the still, stale heat of July
I always seem to swallow
Ice cubes the wrong way.

I love so fiercely,
So fast.
My love can ignite candles
And start brushfires.
My love can fill oceans,
Lunar craters,
And you.
I spend my love
Like a first paycheck from a first job.
I love recklessly.
I love openly.
I have not had a real boyfriend
Since the 8th grade.

I complain and complain
And complain.
I hate people who complain.

I only open my wrists metaphorically
Yet these scars
Stand at attention like
Soldiers whose minds are still at war.

I think my fingers are bleeding
But there is no way to know for sure.
I am blind
But like Oedipus I have sight.

I brush my teeth with irony
Because its the only thing that has
Ever been able to polish
Any part of me.
I brush my teeth with irony
Because without this irony
I am just another girl
Who can’t breathe without assistance.
Who can’t feel without being told what feeling feels like.
Who can write sonnets
But doesn’t know what the **** Shakespeare is talking about.

And this,
This is the irony I brush my teeth with.

I want blood on my knuckles.
I want blood painting pavement.
I want teeth falling to the ground and
Twinkling like wind chimes.

I want breath barely passing through lungs.
I want bruises mirroring
Inky fingerprints on a criminal record.
I want concrete on my tongue.

I want to destroy.
I want to be destroyed.
I want my torso to be the Roman ruins.
I want my hands to be the Mayan remains.

I want explosives hooked up to my jaw.
I want fingers on triggers.
I want nervous sweat.
I want fight or flight.

I want fight.
I want gun powder and knives.
I want fist colliding with face.
I want hospital bills and ambulance sirens.

I want violence.

I am freezing
And you are burning

Icicles forming on the inner corners
Of my eyes like lost sleep
While a fire rouges
You’re skin

You are the hot stove
I was always warned not to touch
I am the lost ice cube
You kicked under the fridge

Maybe we should get a little closer
So I can cool you down
And you can warm me up

I am a girl cut out of marble.

He is a boy made of copper.

I am a girl so starved
I gorge on air.

He is a boy with a belly full of
Unlucky pennies.

I am a girl with a mouth full of hornets.
They sting my gums.
I talk around the swelling.

He is a boy with wooden legs.
I wonder how he doesn't splinter.
How he doesn't burn.

I am forged from fire.
My lungs blacken and
My skirt billows like the smoke
Coughing out of a chimney.

He ripples like water.
He is always moving.
He walks like ocean waves
And I am pulled into his tide.

He is the boy on the moon
Throwing his fishing line into the sea of stars.
Somehow he catches me.
A black hole amongst galaxies.
There is no way this can end well.

I am a black hole.
I swallow.
I take.
I never give back.
I hope this won't be a problem for the boy on the moon.

He is a ghost of kiss
Still pressed to my neck.
A reminder of what was.
Of what could be.

I am a phantom
Wallowing in this mortal plane.
I am a black shadow.
The thing you see out of the corner of your eye.

He is a boy with a tongue so sharp
It could be used as a sword.
I'd follow him into battle.

I am a girl with a wild mane
And a tamed heart.
Looks can be deceiving.

He is a boy with teeth made of honey.
How did he get so lucky?

I am a girl whose most prized possession
Is a scuffed pair of boots.

He is a boy who is more metallic than sweet.

I am a girl who was not made to be touched.

He is a boy.
I am a girl.
Sometimes we intersect.

My heart has deflated.
My heart has turned to a black and limp
Pebble in the belly of my palm.
My heart leaks juices
That remind me of meat.
I'm a vegetarian now.

The valves on my heart don't work anymore.
This much I am certain.
My heart sits in the makeshift oven
My ribs act as.
No longer a cage, no longer bone.
Just an oven chalk full of gas.
Will you brave the heat?

My heart was once a peach.
My heart is now a rotting plum.
Mold colonies take refuge.
I have named each spore.
Narcissus is my favorite.
He is green while the others are gray.
Its almost ironic.

They want to pickle my heart in a jar.
They want to inject me
Full of formaldehyde.
They want chemicals trickling out
Of my ears and open mouth.
My jaw slacked just for this.

I am lying on a surgery table.
My heart is about to be taken out.
I say goodbye to
My dearest, oldest friend.
I hope I can see it fossilized
And put in a great display case in a great history museum.
Everyone can marvel
At the heart so black, so flat, so burnt, so dead
It nearly exploded in a girl's chest.

I do not remember the steady pulsing.
The steady pumps.
The punctuations to each second.
I do not remember the flutter.
The skips.
But most importantly
I do not remember
The rotting.

Gardenias used to grow
In the spaces between my ribs.
I read online
They symbolize joy.

Daffodils are the poster child for chivalry.
Thats what you showed
When you opened the car door for me
And offered a smile
As delicate as a flower petal.

That night when you opened your arms
To reveal plastic daisies
Growing on the inside of your biceps
Lavender clouding my mind.
I picked each blooming stalk and
Placed a bouquet on the window sill.

When you kissed me
I was an orchid.
You had mistaken me for a red rose.
You bleached me until I was white.
In the morning,
You tried to paint me yellow.

In the morning
I was a chrysanthemum.
In French class we learned
You must never give them to someone
When you enter their home
Because it is disrespectful.
Because they symbolize death.

The gardenias turned to brown and
Decaying stems were lodged in between my teeth.
All I see is lavender
When I look at a man now.
For a year
I cut up daffodils in my bedroom and
Hoped you would drive by
And look up at my window.

Did you clip the daisies off your body?
Did you offer them to someone else?
Did you brag to your friends
That your garden
Is much bigger than theirs?
Much prettier?
That all the flowers in your garden
Only bloomed because you have a magic touch?

Now I tend to hydrangeas.
Now I water irises.
Now I am a peony.
Now I own a diary full of pressed magnolias.
Now I leave forget-me-nots on your doorstep and
Hope you know who they're from.