My biggest fear has been
that one day, you will get so deep within me
that you will realize
I am just
a child stuck inside someone she hates.

Why is it
that after I cry
I feel as if I have been
washed inside

but when you **** me
I cry

because
I never want to be
clean again.

I think that you will feel better
if I remind you to keep bottles of seawater and a spoonful
of honey on your
bedside for the next time you get sick:
a detox, this will climb into your pores like a
pillow
this will smooth any of the scars in your digestive
system, your fear is in
you like it is a new ***** that is destined
to fail. Sometimes suffering wants to be silent but I have
tried to talk yours down, promise
that it is okay to be
soft
and okay to need to add sweetener to bitter tea
and acknowledge pain like
I do when I imagine myself as a little girl again, palm out
because she knows she is lonely for
someone to hold her hand.  I
pass pills to you, maybe they will stretch out your throat
or decrease your fever by a couple degrees
without realizing
you would feel better if I just
thanked you for taking care of me when I’m sick, too.

white hot morning,
deep enough I feel your heartbeat in my belly
and all will dry like cement

when I reached in and drew our initials
with
the bend of my fingers
stir up the dancing dust only visible
beneath sunlight,
you drug it into me with your tightrope your i’m sorry
i won’t be so rough this time

promise
your veins mumbling against the parts of my
body that are a sponge,
i am only going to bleed for good things
now and you should too
but every hole I have
wanted to say that they only ever bled for you

because I like feeling warm in winter
trick myself into thinking
I do not have to wear socks, you look like the moon
with shooting stars
of sweat pouring down your back
and

everything drips
like it is trying to make my ***** wetter.

While you
had me check to
make sure you are still alive,

I noticed
the most beautiful
embroidery on your heart. (It did not say

her name
or my name)

The valves open and shut so
quickly
not because you are
dying, but because you have so

much love
you could overflow

you are too big of an ocean to just
up and leave me.
I am learning

to tie my veins to yours
so
breathing becomes a little easier for
you and the thump da thump

(I have a heart murmur)

will draw
a portrait of two lovers not abandoning

each other. Red as a rose’s
flesh, pink as ours:
together,
we can never become threadbare.

I wanted my taste-buds
to feel like sequins on the tip of his tongue, to be
something that
could attach to him and decorate
his insides. Maybe he would not hurt anymore
if everything looked beautiful
from his throat
to his intestines – like water washes
blood
away, dyes itself red to save someone’s wound,
I wanted us to trade saliva. Trade
mouths, he could have
my strong stomach. I could take the mud
out of his esophagus for keeps –
trade bodies like school lunches between friends.
To be as young as me again,
to build it all again
so he has veins of lace and vines connecting from
his heart to his lips, to my lips in case
I ever have to **** out
the flowers that never got to grow
inside him again,
taking up space he could use to just feel better.

Nobody really talks about how
their lovers swallow
between sentences, or **** their knee into your
girl parts
bruising them like a too ripe peach
between his dreams. I am having a hard
time being separate now,
when I have learned
all the things I can miss of his. Our tongues
pulsing in sync after swallowing
cinnamon,
music playing that does not match the thrusts
of him inside me,
changing clothes in front of each other,
a rose garden on my bottom
birthed by his palm,
little gemstones of wetness, how stray fuzz
clung to his beard more than I even
could, the certain words he
pronounces like
others. I came to trust their existence,
bits I was alright with not being able to predict:
separated, apart, alone, a divorce
and I have returned to
fearing the realization that we are not the
same person. We came so
close to
melting into our mixed body fluids, and I was
so happy because then he could
never leave me - if he touched another
woman, I would, too. I
would know
and feel everything and understand why it
happened. I would sleep upon
his adam’s apple until
he needed to swallow between words to her.
Being separate
is like having to pass on these things
nobody else cares about,
the torch, the Intimacy Olympics. I believe
the next person won’t notice what
he mumbles as he falls asleep at night. He
may as well not spoken
rather than it dissolve into the air. I
wonder if atoms feel this way when they split
or if they trust
in the science of what their
partner will do once they are gone. But
atoms do not pick up
the winter weather on their face like he does,
do not turn pink in the cheeks in
cold: nobody has
such beautiful things to miss as I do.