I have let others be young for me
and swallowed years through the saliva of
grown men,
aged to twenty-one
after my first sip of something strong.

The stars
taught me to stay quiet: the brighter I got
farther I had to fall down
(four feet, five feet, five and half).

I never needed to grow up
ached for ancient paintings and literature
in case it would
help me to grow down. Now I am

just two months away from being eighteen
already holding more than a
hundred years
worth of other people inside me
(fifty, twenty-five, fifty-four, thirteen).

the weeds are dead, my cheeks are pink

-

when i put things in my mouth
they become alive

grow

-

i
bleed just so the world can retain its color

it began when he cried

"i am on fire,
i love you.” and suddenly i was water

-

i used a string
to pull him out of my belly so
that he would not drown
-

i can’t
help but think there is too much life in me

he said
girls like me should come with yellow tape
police property, do not cross

and if that is because I am *******

I guess now
my skin should say: crime scene, do not

touch

because I am crying over men like they’re
still just boys.

The shadows make swans
out of our necks when you sleep in my bed, the
only hour I do not feel so heavy
as after reciting poetry to a fallen star
or finishing a conversation without some goodbye word

leaving spider webs
in my mouth while my lips wait
for the cue to close, a signal to move on from whatever
happened and left without departing.

Saliva strings out from your cheek like spider legs
and I like this so much more.

We condemn bugs,
those icky things, for daring to sleep where no one else
does – but does that not mean that bugs
never want anyone to be lonely?

when morning no longer opens our eye sockets
snails will use their glue

when the sun stops loving the moon
I want to take your hand, and be light, and fly from the
bottom of earth’s oceans
all the way to the astronomies, we can
be the insects keeping the moon and stars not lonely.

there is a small thing, a paper cut
in my window screen
and for days now I have used it to ask every bird
every bumblebee every animal with wings
if they have met
my dead best friend in the sky
because I see her hopping from cloud to cloud
on my way
home from school all the time
and want to know when she's learned how to fly.

I am not your savior, I am
not god with **** and small hands and a girl’s moan.

The good things about me are not here
to redeem you
or be your solution or stand in the exact light
less nice women would not flock to
when you said the lightbulb
was shattered by a ***** with razor sharp claws.

I learned this
with rope burn breathing on my wrists

and biceps screaming at me when they flexed, they
could have given me a black eye
but now I just have
a black heart
mourning the family man I could not rescue.

I tried to chain myself to him, be
the good girl who woke up a child and laid down
a *****
hiding his tears with the dampness.

I did this so well I
never knew I was hiding my own, becoming a pink
orb of plush, sponge, a ******* machine.

It did not put a baby in my belly
just a ghost in my womb
of everyone’s sadness and pain and large hands that
are believed to protect
when a shadow casts from your bed at night –
see, the same shadow casts over mine.

Tell me cheeks like mine
are made for smiling, and I will tell you to go find
a ******* smile
of your own if you need it so badly.

if we were a park, you’d
be the cobblestone next to the grass
and i would be
all of the nature killed to
keep you beautiful and weeded.

i have flashbacks
of you
trimming my bangs on the lawn

then
making me dig them up years later to
prove that i can decompose
like anyone else.

our bodies are water
and I never get my hair wet since I
hate myself and you run out

in storms
because you love
how you can both **** things and

make them grow. when
anyone tastes me, i am flavorless

dewdrops of memories that
never happened
but continue to sink stones anyway.

the insects have chapped lips

calling for their
loved ones across the concrete
and i have chapped lips
screaming for you to come back
with a little bit of mercy, please love.