to ****** someone by
crying for them.

I am so sad
that my eyelids have begun to take the
appearance of an apricot,
sickly,
bulging, too ripe, easily bruised.

Please accept my apology
for hurting
whether or not

you love her still, whether or not there is
a mention of her consistency
between your legs –

please
think about how sorry I am for
not being cold to you
when it could save us. I have fallen in
love with
pain

because it looks like a rose's hips
and I am reminded
that she is not a flower because flowers
always die –

nothing else could make me smile
like
knowing the truth will hurt.

they have
become so nothing that they are everything. I
hate myself for
liking the stubble that inflames
my skin

I hate myself for caring so much about
being hurt
by them, for wanting

to show them
how bright my blood is when they turn me inside
out
and my veins show like
the splitting seams of a shirt, tagless
for more breathing room.

men are of no importance to me
so much that they have become everything. I

wait
to fall asleep in
the ocean spilling from their bodies

because I always have this desire to drown where
another girl did not want to.
I learned
there is no god, just
love addicts and the vulnerable
who piece together memories out of

salt. all

bodies are made of salt.
water, ***, I want to care so little that I love the
thought of men
breaking me open like a clam
that dies when they take the pearl out.

His hands were as long as legs,
god, the kicks
could bruise my skin
but I learned them like planets. I can’t hate eyes on me
so much if they are like a telescope,
stargazing. Some
have purple freckles, are healing, and I can
think of those who hurt me
as children who
think they want to be astronauts
but are scared of the dark. So, the blue
sky walks
slowly down the aisle to night when I mention
maybe my constellations are too much like veins to
be seen yet. Who do I
save by making
him
not want to rip me open and **** out my
gravity again?
Sometimes he reminds me that
dark matter is not
the space between two people, but the color of their
skin when they touch. So, I
wish he would not touch me and
slide planets inside that hurt to stay in orbit.

After the bleeding ceased,
I was supposed
to be

okay. There would be no more sharp things
inside me,
and even better,
nothing left for them to slaughter.

(My dead baby, pelted with thorns,
knows why roses
are red.)

Yet
I am still hurting. I
am not empty like I should be.

When the dry ache turns sharp, I still
think
that someone
is kicking their way to my heart.

for weeks, I believed
there were field mice scurrying under my skin
and dust from their toenails gave
me a cutting cough
as if they had been walking
on hateful words written in chalk

but it was you,
my body treated you like *****.

after I lost you, I grew a second layer of flesh
that covered your face,
a white towel, the white flag of peace
although
I already saw you in pieces.

nobody could have given you
a better funeral
than my swiss army knife and I

its blade wrote your would-be name where
you never got to touch
so maybe
bacteria would crawl inside
and I could still believe in the mice.

I became so scared of hurting you
that I stopped
wanting to touch you,

and now
I just wait for other things to do it for me. A
sapling has reached puberty
greening its leaves

while an old oak dies, limbs
creating air
around your face
almost like wind but more like breath:
it

is syrupy
stuck to your chest hair. I do not

need anything more than the knowledge of
how my cotton slip
would pull
against you, or how your skin

reacts when it is
about to rain – how the clouds react
for you.

Without me
you can feel how promises begin
to feel like sea foam

and

why

when you wake up
in my bed every morning, it is because
I whispered
an apology too loudly
and little vibrations touched

something
in your ear. I am sorry for that, too –

sorry for the times we
forgot to take our glasses off
before
you were on top of me

sorry that it takes less than a month for a
habit to form
but years to break them

which is why
I still
want
to touch you

before someone else can show you
how walking barefoot
boosts your immunity system.