I loved him
when his words reflected a shadow, he was nothing more
than a cloud separating Earth from the moon

told me that no one’s heart  has ever been too big for
their head
but he never held me up to the light

(and he broke mine).

This morning
I remembered I am just small pieces of my mother’s body
yet I fear falling asleep beside her
in case she knows
that I want to **** myself, cells that came from her.

It is selfish, now I wish I could be
as opaque as him.

I wondered if it is okay to break your mother’s heart in
some ways, though not others
and remembered that he wanted to paste
another girl’s hair onto me so that I would be happy.

Up against fog
I wondered if it is better to be the moon
or to imitate the sun.

I wish I had the time to research
biology and chemistry and physics to relate our bodies
to electricity, come up
with a simile for *** and science.

But I doubt there would be any translation
of how your breath
raises polka dots on my skin.

I do not know what else that could mean
except there are insects
with as many legs as I have minutes spent on thinking
about well you learned to whistle.

I have my heart open like a winter morning, like his birthday gift
wrapped in brown paper bags
clutching at the shreds
as if loving me more will make me less sad. It has not:
see, my bones shatter like icicles,
I am weak. His affection melts like snowflakes on my tongue.

I want to taste him until the flesh pares
and someone can finally take me to the hospital where we kissed
have a glance of what’s intact,
better, what isn’t.

It has been December every day since I last visited you, Doc
but you have good eyes – can watch hell freeze in
my chest. The calendar says July, but my body doesn’t believe it
possessed from memories of a woman
retching in this very room here, behind a screen
you saw my boyfriend naked and behind your back I kissed him.

He will not say that sorrow is eating my heart out,
nor have my veins been cut by scissors –
that does not mean that he is not thinking it. See me cold and blue.

You bought me spaghetti. That was nice of you,
we carried it to a bakery and bought cupcakes for dessert.

The rain hit us
and the plate of spaghetti warmed my knees
and you bought me a book of classic love poems
that said nothing about how you would break my heart later
and I cannot write this poem anymore.

We sat on two different benches,
one in front of my college and another by a long stoplight
holding your beautiful gifts in my arms.

It was the first time
you loved me where everyone could be jealous of us.

Think of how much world is wasted on
bad eyes - by blindness, or ones that merely do not want to see.
The next thing you know you cannot miss a sunrise
and french kiss both moon and stars
goodnight, your head will hug its fallen hair on the pillowcase,
strands telling stories of when you were not conscious. I
realize you will visit jewelry stores and
watch how gemstones are faceted. You will imagine the galaxy
within an amethyst, publish novels on their bouquets
of cigarettes, worry about how pretty things can **** themselves too.
Everything is a story: you ask to see my cellulite,
you tell me how it got there, how my skin stretched to make
room for every place we shall go
including statelines that do something similar. We stretch apart
and still we are okay. We think about how the same
dawn reaches us, I can almost see your pupils dilate when the sky
dances - I watch but you hope to learn the ballet.
Someone is taking a photograph right now that they can look
at later, ours never came out the way I wanted them to
or perhaps the memories just go by another name.
I learned about homophones when I hurt you
by trying to sound beautiful. It is so much easier when we can see
morning peeling open our feelings, easier when you're here.

Hair dye is on my bathroom wall -
now everyone knows
I put myself together like papier-mâché.

My stomach is empty. My heart is too full for me
to eat anything
tonight,

tonight is about biting someone's hand
because they are ******* me hard and because they did something wrong
seven months ago. Then,
licking the blood from his knuckles whispering, I am sorry
but you are just too much for me to take.

I open his skin for all the times I
needed to open mine. For every sore morning-after.
God gave me the gift of sweet revenge and the curse of loving
so much my body is a storage unit without a lock.

I am sorry
but my teeth chatter whenever I get overwhelmed. His
blood is so much warmer than mine.