the black pavement met me with two toes
and I realized
it is hot because hell is underneath.

ribbons and your cologne
lead me to elevation, but that just gave
me farther to fall –

I learned
how the moon cannot take a full breath
so she donated her lungs
to the sun in a tiny glass bottle, glued them
on with twisty ties from bread.

that is how rays
were made.

mornings are made of night’s death –
a garland of stars
that just drop
or dissolve upon a devil’s pepper kiss.

you welded your teeth to my skin
and I felt the burn
so intensely, I knew you belonged in hell.

there are aliens who do not believe in me
and twice as many men.

there are opals
that get their color from blood droplets.

there are novels that never got composed
just spat onto paper.

there is a trunk full of
vintage clothes and their women.

there are
pieces of dust I have mistaken for rag dolls.

call me honeysuckle
and I know why (your ****
should have
stretch marks for every time I’ve made it grow.

I like to leave strands of my hair in the sink of anyone
I have ever loved or hated
because when they clean their bathroom,
I want them to remember how many times I
cleaned up blood and puke and ***
in their name –

I do not want to be a ghost that silently haunts on skin
but so tangible, even their
house will remember how I feel to touch.

He lived in the perfect place
for a trailer park,
but his had the only wheels for miles. It
was a cemetery with just one

dead body,
a morgue with a single
black garbage bag.

We had a funeral for my hair
when he held
scissors to my skull, and swallowed my
motor cortex so I would never

run away – a promise
that he needed to check for silkworms
in case that is why my hair

stayed so soft.
My braids went into the plastic bag

and his tongue danced down my throat
daring me to move
saying he would love to
see me bend all my bones for him.

All his blankets were green
like the forest,
all his walls made of wood paneling –

me, the last young thing
and he buried me alive in his bad breath.

I am okay with blood in soft spaces
like between her neck and collarbone, flower shapes on
her *******, a trail from thigh to cotton sheets,
the sky vomiting sunset
on the carpet where my kitten sleeps.

Just not on concrete, nothing should escape a
person where one could not rest
and be safe
while clouds regenerate clear blood for her veins.

the earth creates pearls
from cream

and

that is how i got to be beautiful
and round and

everything he wished i
would not

be able to accomplish without
curdling first.