how many times do we have to do something
before it becomes familiar
to us?

familiar is a word
quite similar in tone to family

yet it can apply to getting stung by a bee
tasting the inside of another
person
making tea, baking a cake
in your underwear
breaking an eggshell like a bone.

it takes maybe two, maybe three times
until anything feels like home
but is it really home?
i will have lived for two decades

and have
only climbed to the top of a tree once.

I can organize my cuts and burns
by alphabetical order, day of the week, last year this year.
I can recite the reasons why I love them more than
any man, any shirttail brushing inside
my inner thigh:

they never leave. My blades never miss,
I never have to miss my blades when they leave.

I heard the story of a man who was murdered, his wife abused
and still he did not leave
he stayed like a scar
because he rose again the moment someone else
touched her skin, blew up as if full with gasoline.
I watched him fly above the city,
dropping death on those who already had their hands on it
wrung it out of beautiful men and women.

I want to do that so badly,
**** myself cell by cell, scrape the skin off
flake by flake. I want to
be dead but not know it yet. Sail in the air as ashes.

I have known, and I have cared for, those who think
rebuilding a person is love
which is quite nice
in theory
but then, I became destroyed. I was a project,
a house of cards that had fallen
and frustratingly needed put back together, elevated
the way the moon gets lifted from grass
or a friendship necklace
lurches from my lover’s body. His collarbone peak
separating the relationship from the heart.
When someone told me
love can be piecing each other back together,
I just thought of how it could be
crumbling together, too —
mixed up, mixed blood, if he were to die, my
necklace would disintegrate with his
tongue. We would cremate sterling silver
and even then, he would not be destroyed. We are not
scientists, we are two people who kiss
together like how two
wooden-sticks’ll use the same drum to create music.
There may be splinters, may peel but
can still make sound. No one
takes a drumstick to the repair shop, they just
buy a new one —
I want that to be love. Stop trying to
fix me and touch my everything, all my broken parts.

i:
how is that garden
i planted on/in your chest doing

ii:
in the morning, i like to write
in the morning, i like to drink coffee

the mug goes between my feet
so i don't need socks
and my hands give birth to my words
is that okay is that okay is it

odd

iii:
speaking of coffee,
we work so well with it. i am milk i am
made to be spoiled

and you are just sweet enough
to go perfectly
in me
(cinnamon)

iv:
sunburn would be okay if
it left your handprint forever pale
on my ***

v:
if you ever leave me again,
i will be so sad

my body will become strawberry milk and
you may not recognize me
for the color of
my blood

vi:
is it the sunset or the moonrise

Your parents snuck over on a boat,
taught you two languages
and I think about that a lot, that something
without wheels brought me the love
of my life. When it feels as
if I am drowning, I remember what rushing
water brought to the United States,
everything can save you
everything can **** you
everything has two sides
two languages. I want to buy your mother a
chocolate milkshake and toast to
that, I want to thank her for
giving me the directions on how to float.

In a meadow where all of the plants have
the pattern of calico cats,
where the birds sound almost watery
have the tweet
of a smoke detector with low batteries,
where dandruff is just
the sky chipping as nail polish,
I realized
my palms could hold a tree to the ground

he won't **** me when I'm sad
but god does,
god does so well I get down and never
come back up for air.

some kind of *****,
being passed around with invisible hands
making invisible marks on her back.

the least I want is the autograph
of every night I do not
sleep,
have my lover rest for me

on me.
anything, anything, I fear he wants me
to stay empty.  

I want to say,
if you don't want me to be so sad
want the heartache to
go away

get the **** inside of me, cause
an earthquake, create a better ache —

all god does is cup
his hands around my neck and expect me
to still be able to breathe.