there is a gemstone
in my stomach, it makes my
cheeks nearly purple.

sometimes, oxygen
kills me more than it allows
my lungs to expand.

girls draw butterflies
across my breast, but men put
them in my belly.

after my heart broke,
my veins looked like the poems
he wrote on my back.

inside is sugar
and spice, but nothing else nice
until the *** comes.

Roses are hidden in buckets
a child could put one in her hair, a child could
create sandcastles up to their knees with
such. Yet these

creatures do not use his or her thorns
to intercept the road from garden to factory lines.
Funny to think one's skin shall

became tainted by something
that sleeps in peace right outside. Then, I think
about packing man into a bottle of mist
and would like to harvest my love's breath.

I believe that I can change you, or revive
what marrow was carved from my bones
the night that train swept you away. It will grow
like plaque on teeth,
widen my hips so I look more or less how I
did the first time - our first.
In my year of oceans and sunburns and purging,
polygraphs were not yet invented and
bodies still responded
only to those who kept eye contact during ***.
You curl my hair with your fingers
but I say you cannot break my heart again. I have
written enough letters to power
an airport, you have killed enough cells for
us to have made a child - only lonely
because none of this can be
said aloud. If your hands secreted invisible ink,
you'd just quietly piece me back together
without realizing
it could help us feel better. If
mistakes were like sunburns, I hope you'd hand
me aloe vera and make the wounds go numb.
Listen, I have seen you love
more than I have heard your ghost haunt my bedroom:
whispering that lie, the one that got away.