Petals of red, the newest bloom in a cycle of seasons I
wade through with my body
holding nothing else but the ghost of a child:

supposedly this is life
and life is a horror story, but it is no coincidence that
this did not happen until I grew
to be the length of the train on a wedding dress.

I will not apologize for finding gore so beautiful, I am
saying so because it is mine –
a slit of skin that is not from a cut
filling the whole
bathtub with blood. I dilute water and material to
make sure they stay mine, the same to men.

If this is a temple,
I want my heart to be in the basement

where everyone I love can run and hide when there is
an emergency, the safe haven
that will flood and dye his face my color because
I did not keep his child this month.

I don't know what has made me so
fluid, how I go from empty to full based on what everyone
wants to drink
or the amount of lovers I can drown just by
breathing.

I am so weak
that I am something
that cannot even be cut open (I am

so sorry that the only thing I am good for is soaking
your clothes so you
feel like you can never run away from me.

I know a girl who has a tattoo
of the words “hold on” and it is mostly sad because
her skin
could not hold onto the needle that
breathed the ink
into her bloodstream. She keeps the words
as a petal on the flower of last
summer, reminding her that we can become bruised
again and again and again
without ever losing our sense of touch.

1.   I am trying not to be the kind of girl
who is wrapped up in
initials and baby names when
all that matters is
if when we
touch, our fingerprints feel the same

2.   I have seen you
in too many hospital gowns
for you to have to see me in one

(I am trying
so hard not to **** myself

for you, every day).

3.   The day we fell in love, my heart realized
it is okay to be black if your
hair is, too.

4.   I am trying to hear your heart live
but sometimes
the empty parts of you
speak louder (and not just your belly)

5.   I am trying to think
of you
as something as bright as the sun, not
just something that burns
when we get
close enough to touch.

6.   You are more than just skin on top
of my wounds.

Your shorts leave their handprints, not a bruise
but the color of a forest fire
where you fell asleep on your right side.

The pinks
as fine as through a fairy’s wing –
orange as when the sky is not a sunset but there is
some resemblance –
a sickly, burning, faded green
where you are not a tree

but you are not dead either, where the days
are ending
on you. The way someone gets when
he throws up, flames vomiting from somewhere
and your skin becomes the fumes.

Even inanimate objects
do not want you to forget them –
we rot other people just to leave our own mark.

The clouds are shy when you are around,
they stop peeking around the shoulder of the sun and simply
dissolve
into particles smaller than pores, pills
that I can swallow – I am their mother, the bulk of
their weapon
pass all the greyness through word of mouth. I hurt when
everyone else is scared to,
I water everything so that the sky does not have to.
You said I should be gentle with you
so the clouds are afraid
to be awake when
you are. You do not take up too much space
but those stars in your eyes had to get there somehow, fog’s
only here in the morning because our
souls are making love –
all of the rest of the day it is up my skirt. I
am the mother to mist, but you get along better with sun.

i know where to find ghosts
just take my hand, and we can go where bubbles
never burst

where the sun hits particles of dust

where cars in rain
and streetlamps have those bursts of light that
extend farther than the bulb

dandelion fields, clubs where singles know how
to make hearts with cigarette smoke

where holes are carved in dirt that has never
been caressed, where
bruises go

when they are no longer on your skin

because i know about
searching for what is left of the dead with fingers
cupped like a shovel, knowing
you were the last thing they ever touched

well,
they're not just in the ground
ghosts are somewhere in the air i promise.