I used to cry when he put things inside
but now I
think about it as having
my cobwebs cleared out and replaced
with what might
make me warm-blooded again.

If you stare at something long enough,
the next place your eyes travel
will hold its outline
even if only for a second

and I wish
I would have done that with his hands.

I have searched for a year, who gave you two hearts
and did not bother to
cross-stitch, knit them together to touch –

more and more
you have become the day that my clock broke
and the ticks sounded like my lips
reaching out for yours, and how you never kissed me
so the tocks never happened.

The first night I came beside him
we ****** in braille. It was quiet the way some fog
drifts low
touching your head, but too much of a 
phantom to ever feel inside you. I squeezed his
hand in code - once, this is
good. Twice, I am sorry this has to happen now, 
three never happened because I
could not let go: 
he was my air and he was the ceiling when
I arched my back, he held me
when I gave pieces of myself away to the summer
moon
whispering about my hands. The finger I
awoke his pillowed lips with and
we had the idea
to exchange chewing gum in the morning because
Suddenly it was important to taste each other:
I broke the barrier of not
knowing. Our mattress squeaked in
tongues as I told it how we would feel together
when I hold the sheets that way 
I clawed through his wrists to exhale the first time.
And we have kissed
like hot rain ever since, silence saying
how I once had no one to touch me but myself. I
did not know
how to hold him without believing it 
were an emergency - desperate 
places hands go when you smell me in the air
haunting the room and filling the inches between us.

clothes worn too tight
so it feels like there are needles who need me, who bleed me
a million parasites ******* and taking me.

he is *** and surgery, he is far too in love with life
wants to be inside of everything

but i like the miles
i like being so far that he cannot take things out of me
or even know they’re there.

i am a parasite, i want everything to be inside of me and
that
is why we
fight with him in my mouth (having is feeling.

builds midnight with paper stars and dark attics
because then the sky can be ripped
into shreds, stuffed down my throat and suddenly i possess
the whole world without needing to live in it.

The best thing you can do to get me to forgive you
is take off your belt
and make me bleed, better than I can.

I have slit my wrists into mouths for air and
pockets to hide unhappiness in

because of words
like sorry
like I wish I did not have to do this
but everyone always has to, I know, and I need

for someone to carve the
flesh from my asscheeks the way my
parents wanted to
that time when I was six years old and dashed into
the road really hoping to get hit

for the first time. You
could hold the blood and guts for the first time and I
promise
when I am empty, an apology will feel full.

You can tell if someone is rotting by looking in their eyes. I
get the look of smoke on cotton,
my mother's childhood house burning when
the doors became more difficult to shut than my legs:
her father died
her mother drowned
so she could pass the bottle to mine. The only ring I have
been given are the purple
bags and bruises and tapeworms
everyone says were alright in childhood,
the rings around my eyes tapering like the sound of
morse code. Read me
listen to me please because my body fluids are like ashes
that will go up in flames again if
ignored: I will burn you. Your black eyes will
get blacker, darkness is the only thing that can commit to me.