girl, falling snow

I imagine the cold air
brings braille to my skin, my entire body to be lifted
from concrete
and read like a goodnight prayer

blood braids
my hair

cheekbones break and collapse as craters
on the moon

they sink to cradle dust
and atop, feed other little rotting things that do not know
gravity
sticking like a new ***** –

to die from your emotions
is to
finally become god.

I ****** myself until I bled
because I
knew you would
have wanted to taste it.

worms live from the decay of dead bodies
they are beautiful and soft,
and anyone could break one
but why would they want to when
their bodies seem as sunlight against glass?

you do not know that they want to get inside of you,
take from you,
and add your remains to their
empire of dirt. their soil, their sustenance.

he found his way into my soul,
he wants me to give all my insides away
to make him more beautiful.

worms think they are ugly
they have to fill themselves up up up
of other people, until everyone else is empty
and ugly too.

i am so sad
i want to die, want
to open up my wrists and show him my veins
because they look like worms

like him,
and i need them
but never wanted them.

intimacy,
his sweat sprinkling salt on my skin
so that I will never want
to open it.

our ***
is how it feels to be a skipping stone

at first, cool to touch
and level
then dripping with
the sweat of the sea. it is loving without concern

that the love will become
too important,

loving
at dusk

swollen lips, red like they are blushing

sunset dyeing the sky scarlet
like it is blushing

he gets under my skin
where the flesh is so pink, it looks like i am
blushing –


          small strawberry pores.

still, my head
stays above the water

it just hits me hard and i swallow
waves
of salt.

lingerie lace constricts my hips like seaweed
it is exhausting to love him
the way i do,
my breath moves
wind through his hair
and i pant oceans into his chest.

he must feel
my eyelids flutter

in an ache
to be opened into a path, the trail from
body to body to

     shared dampness
         shared passage across it

              the skipping stones
feel plush
if i want it hard enough
caressing the body of water.

quietly
learning to let my heart rest, but never my
thighs

his remains on my stomach
like wax.

stars spilled out from the night sky
into morning, mourning,
and
so did your skin.

please know, your
voice is
louder than any gunshot now
even as new bullets echo against
your gravestone.

I scraped my knee
and asked my lover if he thought
the blood is brown because I am all dried out and
rotten inside,
or if I am just full of dirt. As children, we
drew lines in cemetery soil

pretended to snort them – I must have inhaled
the cry of someone’s bones
their whimpers
of exhaustion

(my angel in a cloud
who I cry for each day
keeps asking me to just let her die, she is every
unidentified flying object and
she is tired
of needing to stay afloat, even with wings).

I wish I didn’t need so much sleep
but it is probably my fault.

I lifted
a bookcase of pretty things, doilies beneath
porcelain faces and bottoms
mildew
smoke-stained letters

and blocked the windowpane. Light reminds me
too much of
how I became a mistress
thinking I would not take anything away,
thought I was adding more love
into the world – it is
too full.

Darkness is absence, darkness is my
own creation.

I spent my allowance on it
to pretend I am still young enough for bad men to
want to play dolls
with me, twist their heads around backwards
so they will never know of their
private parts

never be like me.