The sea has many ports, while I have two eyes
but a better thought is how I am
similar to a wave —
I am his, a part of his, despite
having my own composition I move for him.

Do the waves give
their water a massage, I know
I caress his heart as often as I can.

There are crystals in there
where his organs hang like chandeliers, and I
rock them even from
above his skin, above his water —
feel me as something that can be captured.

to love you
is to rid my body of all calcium

and fall limp under the
crescent of your
chin. I see how long your eyelashes
are when I look upwards

and they are so
pretty, you could not possibly
hurt me.

I hang my
bones on them, for you to water.

It is August, but the rain has got us snowed-in
and when you expect everyone
to be upset to get loud to cry cry cry
they do not. It is quiet.
The quiet hurts me (is my sort of madness).

The air outside
resembles the moon, or my skin.

In the winter,
the sidewalks look as if I have been beaten and
died coolly, flatly, quietly
on them. I am so white, I glow.
I am so sickly, I poison the grass.

But it is all very soft and silent,
I am like a pillow
too cold to rest your head on.

At night, I fall, devouring anything that I can
love —
when there is nothing,
I create the big rain, the arsenic rain
I stick to myself and everyone is hush, hush.

I am so tired of not being able to
    to touch what keeps me
         alive.

Redhead, red-handed, I think
it is the devil.

   It poppies bloom on
          my dress, here it is
    the summer of the warm-blooded.

Sometime in the future, I am
expected to have a blood clot and call it my son
my embryo
my fetus
a comet shooting from between my thighs.

I am female. Parts of me will
move on to form an extra set of toes for eighteen
years,
he may hear how unlike me he looks
why his freckles are in the wrong place:

he will learn of adoption
then become convinced that we purchased him
came gift-wrapped
in a blanket, a placenta.

My husband, another set of toes,
will bring out the belly photographs and realize
there has been a whole field of corn
metal poles threatened by
a lightning storm right on my skin ever since.

The child
   my embryo
         my fetus

the handful of cells
will ask if there are any brothers and sisters in
there, inside me.
No, son, just glowing orbs of gas
only stars:

I can hold a whole galaxy under my ribcage
but not another
nine-month long thought.

I have
turned the moon into
your skin at

at least
ten
times by now

and

I have
pretended that I can
think for her

at least
fifty.

I changed her name
to something
kids

are not
supposed to say
and adults

pretend not to know
of.

It is
a whole lot of
wishing
I have things under

control.

Everything
beautiful can
get

cavities
but nobody expects

our teeth to
fall out,
we just stay empty.

In the name of
the

girlfriend
ex-love
and holy ghost,

amen.

She doesn't miss you, she doesn't miss you
but don't worry:
he does not miss me either.

I have to wonder
if there is something I am missing,
some kind of place where lovers are taught how
to hurt one another
because everyone
I have met
so far has done a pretty great job.