I am lying on the beach
sand is in my skirt
the waves break in my eyes
& I am loving you

headfirst.

The reason the sun burns
my skin is the same
reason why

I cannot hold your hand
without sobbing
anymore, you are beautiful
& could ruin everything.

oh god, touching you
kissing you, ******* with you
please **** me oh god.

I was not the first woman to grow fluorescent upon heartbreak
nor was he the first man to grab my hair
expecting me to go along with it, but all I really wanted
was someone to ask me if I remembered to take my meds that day
when there was probably
a meadow of them sprouting all up the length of my esophagus.
Everything had to be inside me
from the day I found out he wanted to be inside her. It was better
when it hurt, I shone like a bruise in remembrance of him.

When were we first able to look at our organs, point out the
brown spots on a liver or cuts under your skin?
I want to know when man first
came to think of me as a piece of fruit. A watermelon
only good for her seeds,

an apple needing a good cleaning. I imagine
they first practiced stitching on those big banana leaves,
made a hole in the center
as if anyone cared whether the plant could breathe.
But really, what does earth science have to do with my body?

I have watched mothers lose
their children, and children lose their mothers. I am tied
by my toes to a loop
which can be seen in cafes and morgues -
the breast-feeding, the burying, the everything is all
on a string. I have heard about
women and children thinking they are unlimited,
I am unlimited, too, if
the two ends of a circle never meet.
My lover once closed his heart off from everyone, and I
never understood until now
that you do not
have to open up in order to be full inside. I still can
water his flowers, even the weeds
and he never has to open his eyes to see and
he never has to open his heart
to feel. I understand that sometimes it is better to just be.

somewhere there is a girl
who is saying, prove that you love me
to someone who watches her sleep
and makes sure
she feels wonderful when he
slides his **** into her *** that morning.

and I know that may not mean much
to other people
but having that would
make me stop visiting my palm-reader who
says I will birth triplet boys
when I can hardly handle
loving a single man, who is saying

I adore you
why don’t you kiss me harder when you are
angry.

but he doesn’t just **** me hard
when he is sad
he just waits until I ask.

prove that you love me, the girl will say
just don’t be surprised if
I forget that
you need me anyway
because caring this much is the same as
drowning in holy water when
god keeps pulling your head up.

I want to cut heart-shaped holes in his wall
so he can see the clouds
billow and pucker up for him, so he can know exactly
how much I love his soft, pale patches of skin
in the expanse of a happy sky
and its clear skin. Ripples as wind
across grass
picking up the skirt of some meadow down south
the powerlines fell but there is still
electricity all over him, I am the kind of lover who
has a heartbeat only in someone
else's hand. I want to have a window into his.