My first inclination
is to write about rifles and *** and ankle socks with frills
around the top, but I do not know
anything about that – much less all three at once.

One time I had a dream, or nightmare, or fantasy
of getting ******
by the barrel of the gun.

Instead of bullets,
glowsticks entered me.

Guns are shooting stars, like *****. I have to steal cartons
of iced coffee to stay awake and
bend the caps
into heart-shapes to have any hope –

morning wood puts me in mourning, that is all I can
ever understand about myself.

notice how I have no
photographs of peroxide on my skin
but kept
three hundred of you.

death is not more important than
how much
we love each other

it just feels better sometimes.

I was born to a woman who smoked cigarettes
and since I was a child, I tried to inhale blueberries until they
stalled my windpipe.

My mother taught me that word –
windpipe – after she coughed for hours upon hours. I
was so happy that day, imagining how I must have swallowed
windchimes for the doctors who helped birth me
in December’s final snow –
how I hoped they believed I sounded pretty, although

covered in that sop adults call life juice. Life juice sounds nice
but I had known babies who
came just as sticky as me and never got to breathe.

Windchimes, you know, the things
beautiful ladies in ankle-length dresses hang outside,
my daddy lived thirteen hours down the interstate and I knew
somehow that he owned one.

In my dreams, I touched it
and pulled on it. I twisted the copper-ends up like my
momma’s hair and pretended we were with my dad by some
lake where the breezes are heavy enough and I
am small enough for them to carry me up, up, and away.

Everyone insisted that windpipes are inside
while windchimes stay out –

I fixed that problem, too. I tried three times to plant chimes in
my ears, unglue parts of the skin there from myself
to make room for dangly jewelry. A tiny
slit was all I needed, but it would not stay open for long

and I never got to swing my head
pretend I possessed the ability to create music like how God
let my momma grow smoke. I never got to exhale.

As I have aged, my body’s become a full moon –
a thing to howl at
unable to hide in the dark (a dark so dark
it swims from beneath me, and I glow like light).

The years have had a refractive nature
and I cracked the eggshell, the first crescent and

the second
supposedly a silhouette holding hands. I am told
beauty is symmetry
so I must have two of everything to make a
                                  whole –

but by dawn, I seem dull
unawake (the thought that no one needs me
on my back anymore, there are

rounder things than me). Without needing to be
reminded, my peel wades to the next
month of sprouting
       pallid craters who match those before them.

Nobody knows how to say goodbye to anything, even the
sea has ruined edges
leaves its will to a muddy bayou. Our
phonecalls hang onto me after there rings a dial tone, a curly tail
of wires ribboned around my most important parts
thigh, artery, genital. The bed
is the whole bedroom, now. I am handcuffed from the ceiling
waiting for your voice box to quiver again
and am kicking and screaming –
I am heartbroken at nothing, not for no reason but for
nothing. Lovers are not versed in goodbyes
or else we would not be lovers. But I prefer the sensation of
suffocation to cold blankets,
rather heat them up with blood and guts than have a
mattress that has never smelled my ***. You do not know how to
ring my neck or drown me in sheets that’ll
just hide hide hide the word
goodbye. If this is your worst trait, not wanting to go,
I am happy to let you love and hurt me until I can float, too.

I heard falling stars twice tonight
and am pretty sure they both were full of milk.

My heart is too heavy
for me to bring it everywhere I go, sometimes it just wants
to sleep under the blankets and sheets all day
where no one can ******* it but me.

When it opens, the treetops are covered in the
color of buttercream
and its branches split like eyelashes from their lids.

Moons can get tired, too,
let go of her brothers and sisters and just burst.

when you feel sad,
I want to take you down to the water
dip our toes in
and pretend that we are saved.

my best friend and I
used to jump from this pier
holding hands, as if
the same minnows would kiss us –

they never did
so we learned to kiss each other.

while you lay on your back,
I will kiss you, too,
and tell you how cute your ******* are.

you say they look like rashes
but they are
more like strawberry buds or a
a woven rug to me.

when you feel sad,
I want to show you how the whole

world is on your side and
nature breathes good health on your
skin, the tears hitting your
cheeks are just waves from the sea.