I would want to be a mermaid if it did not mean I would
be the reason why houses crumble,
saturated in salt, starving for plaster, unable to hold its bones together
as anything more than a butterfly cemetery.

In cages their baby wings can slip out of
but won’t,
coffins engraved like million year old fossils, rings on trees.

I would want to be a mermaid if it did not mean I would
drown any flower I touched or planted in a vase,
laid to eternal rest, unable to nurse sleeping butterflies back to health
and fill pea-sized bellies instead of locket-sized graves.

Your pupils are tiny and starry,
lifting your eyes from that dark canyon
the dust sea

dying them brown, giving them
black skin that won't peel
under sunlight.

I understand moths surround you
but you are strong,
they only
fill your eyes like tears

attracted to the light
your nameless energy, where life touches

you
it just begins to trust.

Insomniac plants must squeeze
their eyelids at night
to build the crystal white structure of
you, hues shadows hold onto

saves, grows to, trusts
as a lullaby verse to become glued on.

We sprout from energy
bright and warm, float in a hot tea bath
chamomile up out of porcelain

rosemary and roses and honeydew
lit by candles,
we feel your energy and just believe.

The last night we were officially in love, the evening the carousel
was out of order

I watched it spin again and again
without any lights or sound, pleading with god to
make me one of the great pegasus forms illuminated by moon
and fake snow.

It would not have mattered,
my feet would have still been bolted to the December floor
a hundred miles, then another, then another

from you. I realize now that it would not have mattered if I had a
pair of wings, I still would have
never made it to you
(but I believed it then). Ungloved to dabble in hot cocoa,
my ten fingers dialed you:
I pretended to have seen real snow, you pretended to love me.

Yesterday, I felt like you
for the first time since I wanted anything to do with you,
remembering the final time you said you loved me. I was there
in the same body that phoned you in winter

watching a broken carousel circle again and again, I was
approximately two inches from
where I stood when you told me goodnight

(and you meant it, where I said goodbye, and I meant it more)
but I had forgotten the moment. Yesterday

I learned I can forget you as easily as you
had me. Remembering us mattered so little that I climbed on the
carousel, tasted the bubblegum lights
hummed to an ice cream truck song, and
declared it the last day I would ever officially think of you,
the morning the merry-go-round did not need the sun anymore.

There are no calories in coffee, there is nothing in my belly
except millipede fingers and toes trying to
impregnate me.

Little calorie ghosts and wandering pieces of meat,
what is left of what I eat eat eat
insects making me bleed bleed bleed,
one warms my hips
the other drags cool metal against my skin, catches on the
veins like loose strings. I am metallic
I taste it from inside my *****, down onto my feet.

Breaking bones, massaging wombs
coffee and centipede
shards carve out my ribcage when I do not like how I feel.

I deserve to take up space,
he said. (six by four feet in an underground
cage)

mama said I never stop crying,
that I'll still scream when I am dead. she
reserved me a plot.

I have loves who
would be mad I left a note.

I have loves who will keep me their ghost, tear
my white sheet skin
because I never said goodbye.

see my flesh
in a necklace,  hypnotize happy boys
you are getting very sleepy

very tired of
holding onto something half-dead.

As a warning, I may impulsively delete my account within a few days. I am at a loss with my writing, and the hate I feel for it is affecting my mental health. A lot of what is here is disgusting. I apologize to everyone.

I have begun to
pluck my eyelashes just so
I can make a wish.

I used to sing a lot, used to lace pearls on flower petals
and the sea would sing to me. I have heard that my female body syncs
with the moon
that I am a tide, my mood is high my mood is low
                            I am a force of nature Mother Earth can hold.

The idea hits me. My heart is set on fire by it:
I am the reason some rocks are heart-shaped, my fluids
can create layers on ammolite.

Even my ***** could purify a pond,
I am earth I am water I am wind I am fire I am juice squeezed from
apples and orange peels
                    only the sun can gather my pulp.

I watch a father star cradle its firstborn
and we exhale on the same sky, I cannot believe it. We eat and drink
from the clouds -                          my clouds, our light.

The opal loves her body (she shines) the wind loves her body (swaying)
birds with fat bellies sing to me and
every one wiggles her ****
because she loves her body - why shouldn't I.
        (There could be pieces of me in everything beautiful).

Your tongue used to sneak in my mouth
like the old days, girls climbing trees to sneak in an older boy's bedroom:
he had a single bed and plaid sheets she would think of
in the same way she thought of wrinkled bubblegum wrappers
but neither tried to taste good for the other. The
boy and the girl just were what they were, just hidden in each other.

My hands could be the bedposts, my hair the headboard,
my skin the blanket she will dig her fingers into, thinking what is home
what is home - somehow it has become a
tap on the window, a whispered I am here, hello.

You helped me to get over my fear of silence,
my chirophobia. When everything was meant to be quiet, when we have
nothing to say, you would pour honey down my throat
and hold hold hold me tight
so tight that it would seem everyone knew. I imagined turning on
the television, there would be an image of us lighting up Times Square:
you would calm the whole wide world. It took us years
to realize that we have the kind of love that is always, always okay.

The girl shimmies down the tree, an old oak
so tall she feels like she has dropped fifty stories before she finds grass,
she feels like she has lost fifty feet worth of body and flesh.

His window is open, her lips separate, it silent and
it is okay. She mouths, I miss you
then climbs up again almost desperately, completely dependent on her
legs to pump air into her lungs and breathe through the pores -
blackbirds see up vines up her skirt, and twigs
bruises like wide bushes and then his hands like a nest. What is home.

Your saliva grew like moss against my cheeks,
I once bit and bled in my sleep, had nightmares so I could hear something
but you gave my teeth a garden to pick vegetables from
and I stopped needing traffic to rock me
to bed: your tongue used to sneak in my mouth, now I have its words.

i:
i find space between us
even when you are inside of me

ii:
it would take me
two hours to fall to the bottom of the ocean
and two days to get to you

iii:
floorboards creak
i sing

you get so close
my ***** breaks like a guitar string

He plays on me like I were a fairground,
I am sun-stained
he is hard.

To me,
there is being dead
and there is being alive twice --
give me your pulse, give me your alive --

I am either empty
or full as a ferris wheel at night.

I don't say that sometimes I cannot fit in
the carousel rides
or that sometimes the carousel rides

won't fit in me. He
takes my heart and puts it on the swings.

(when I forget to take my pills)
everything round becomes a gunshot, a bullet

your freckles fall off
one by one
and shoot down the road towards me ( as fast as bullets go
still I never can catch them)
I can never paste your freckles to my face

of everything I want to put my mouth on,
kiss, then never touch again

pillows shrink to the size of gumdrops ( I will never
sleep again)
and I swallow them, cushion my heart

say it is okay
baby baby soul baby arteries
everyone hurts when the pupils still have to grow
it takes time to snow, to become

quiet.

There is a face at the very bottom of this sea
coral, shells cupping her cheeks
loved the beach
so much she wanted to put waves in her hair, wanted
to be part of the universe that
                                   requires no legs.

For all we know, the oceanfloor
could be the sky
of some other universe
and swimming fish make up the cosmos.

                                                   Saltwater burns


                       the sea
                               so you can see.

things that rhyme with you --
***, coma, three meters of ribbon that are your veins
the emerald sea
any other gemstone-like thing, girls
boys, angels with wings,
pasta noodles with big gaping holes, curls, frizz
buckets of saltwater,
honey, fingertips, promises in two different languages

you exhale softness, and
I have cold hands
the moths have to gather under my nails.

it was once supposed that
swallowing gum would make your intestines
stick together, that
is why I shared my piece with you
one day.  you said you had an idea, soon
we both smelled of cinnamon.

wet, sticky cinnamon
please glue your insides to me, I thought.

I threw up in July, exhaled
you.

I needed to, so I could write about how I get
so sad sometimes
so empty
my hands are cold but my
heart almost always has a fever.

I am so tired, I need to get wasted
but I am pretty sure
any alcohol would curdle in my stomach —

the trashbag I keep under my
clothes, use my intestines as the
drawstrings. I get
anxious, my body is hot and heavy and
moist, everything slides off
my skin and never stops coming back.

I need to get wasted
but sometimes it feels as if everyone I
know is an alcoholic — mother,
sister, uncle, dad. It could happen
to me

and maybe I would finally be happy if
I always had something to
use to drown my body.
Having blood is not enough,
it won’t even stay under my skin. I
am so awake, I could drink
a river

and then another and another
and all my nerves would still feel open.

how many times do we have to do something
before it becomes familiar
to us?

familiar is a word
quite similar in tone to family

yet it can apply to getting stung by a bee
tasting the inside of another
person
making tea, baking a cake
in your underwear
breaking an eggshell like a bone.

it takes maybe two, maybe three times
until anything feels like home
but is it really home?
i will have lived for two decades

and have
only climbed to the top of a tree once.

I can organize my cuts and burns
by alphabetical order, day of the week, last year this year.
I can recite the reasons why I love them more than
any man, any shirttail brushing inside
my inner thigh:

they never leave. My blades never miss,
I never have to miss my blades when they leave.

I heard the story of a man who was murdered, his wife abused
and still he did not leave
he stayed like a scar
because he rose again the moment someone else
touched her skin, blew up as if full with gasoline.
I watched him fly above the city,
dropping death on those who already had their hands on it
wrung it out of beautiful men and women.

I want to do that so badly,
**** myself cell by cell, scrape the skin off
flake by flake. I want to
be dead but not know it yet. Sail in the air as ashes.

I have known, and I have cared for, those who think
rebuilding a person is love
which is quite nice
in theory
but then, I became destroyed. I was a project,
a house of cards that had fallen
and frustratingly needed put back together, elevated
the way the moon gets lifted from grass
or a friendship necklace
lurches from my lover’s body. His collarbone peak
separating the relationship from the heart.
When someone told me
love can be piecing each other back together,
I just thought of how it could be
crumbling together, too —
mixed up, mixed blood, if he were to die, my
necklace would disintegrate with his
tongue. We would cremate sterling silver
and even then, he would not be destroyed. We are not
scientists, we are two people who kiss
together like how two
wooden-sticks’ll use the same drum to create music.
There may be splinters, may peel but
can still make sound. No one
takes a drumstick to the repair shop, they just
buy a new one —
I want that to be love. Stop trying to
fix me and touch my everything, all my broken parts.

i:
how is that garden
i planted on/in your chest doing

ii:
in the morning, i like to write
in the morning, i like to drink coffee

the mug goes between my feet
so i don't need socks
and my hands give birth to my words
is that okay is that okay is it

odd

iii:
speaking of coffee,
we work so well with it. i am milk i am
made to be spoiled

and you are just sweet enough
to go perfectly
in me
(cinnamon)

iv:
sunburn would be okay if
it left your handprint forever pale
on my ***

v:
if you ever leave me again,
i will be so sad

my body will become strawberry milk and
you may not recognize me
for the color of
my blood

vi:
is it the sunset or the moonrise

Your parents snuck over on a boat,
taught you two languages
and I think about that a lot, that something
without wheels brought me the love
of my life. When it feels as
if I am drowning, I remember what rushing
water brought to the United States,
everything can save you
everything can **** you
everything has two sides
two languages. I want to buy your mother a
chocolate milkshake and toast to
that, I want to thank her for
giving me the directions on how to float.

In a meadow where all of the plants have
the pattern of calico cats,
where the birds sound almost watery
have the tweet
of a smoke detector with low batteries,
where dandruff is just
the sky chipping as nail polish,
I realized
my palms could hold a tree to the ground

he won't **** me when I'm sad
but god does,
god does so well I get down and never
come back up for air.

some kind of *****,
being passed around with invisible hands
making invisible marks on her back.

the least I want is the autograph
of every night I do not
sleep,
have my lover rest for me

on me.
anything, anything, I fear he wants me
to stay empty.  

I want to say,
if you don't want me to be so sad
want the heartache to
go away

get the **** inside of me, cause
an earthquake, create a better ache —

all god does is cup
his hands around my neck and expect me
to still be able to breathe.

As strangers pass by, I tend
to look at their wrists for evidence or something,
some name, some other person, something
that tells me they feel —

once upon a time,
I only knew what I felt, what I cared for, if
it was engraved onto my skin.

I heard women talk about the stars being aligned
and in my head amalgamated the image of
internal wires
coiling around each other,
being inserted in one another so
feeling exhales on the skin, the nerves spark.

I look at you
and you seem to be in the distance somewhere,
I could separate my thumb from my index finger and pick you up
I could do the same to the trees
little branches outspread
like hummingbirds, the attractive male ones,
the very same size
I wonder why nature is so bad at bringing us together
that soulmates and sisters can be born
ten thousand miles apart
but sometimes
that is better, when the world becomes a doll
spread her creaking lungs
made of my fingernails and you are a doctor, put her in your
pocket
the dust will be her feed
I wonder if you would seem closer if I
did not wear clothes, if the landscape would open up for
my natural form
give me wings instead of claws,
I wonder if everyone would feel better
if it was okay to be naked, if everyone wanted just each other.

The last time
all 206 bones of yours were
against me, I memorized your pupils

(the size of a dot on an
i, coffee and cream
doughnut holes
letters I write you at breakfast)

so I would not forget
the next time
you had to leave my side. I just did

not think the memory
would have to last my whole life.

I am as big as my parents
were when my elder sister was born, I am also
the age my elder brother was
when I was born.

He had a black notebook and black eyes
before he was blind, yet
he already wrote about what he could not see.

I, the little sister
the uninvited birth
the blood our father slipped
between some
  younger woman's legs — my
mother, not ours.

And my elder sister
thought most about rescuing pills small as
taste buds and opaque rocks
that color-change your mind, the happy
          opals.

She told me liquid cough syrup was bad
yet she taught me to pour
water on my father's recliner, so he may think
my mom had an accident again
maybe she will stop drinking
maybe she will stop drinking
well, maybe, sister
you could stop rescuing pills
and rescue me instead.

I felt like a murderer at age nine
starting big fights about stained seats and
fake **** — my dad
had my mom against the washing machine
but any time she gave him a ****** nose, he'd
have to wash his own **** shirt.

By then,
my brother could not see at all.

One day, he stepped into his black room, locked
the door shut, tied his beard to it
and I lost all sight of him —
my belly could have split open for
seven babies
from the last time he remembered
my name.

I send my siblings birthday cards
they cannot read,
              just to keep track of my age.

It made scallops on my shirt, dried like salt
in seashells —
the final appearance of our love.
I
could have mourned it
as if it were more than the possibility of life
disguised by a million tadpoles. A whole

day, it took him to get home
it may be even more
miles than my body fluids travel in a week.
His, still on my shirt. Hits my knees

(always the knees, have built oceans on them)

He thinks he left, but it was I
who cleaned sand castles from all my crevices

he thinks he left, he
the snail
I have
caught up in years of needing to be ******.

He thought he left, but white beaches
are still in my dresser —
it is what remains.
I am so tempted to say, "your *** outlived you"
but it would not be the
first time his **** did the work for him.

He captured me
before I could become wild
and now
I am a crawl space
for the beasts I cannot be

myself.

no, I am supposed to be a snow globe
               this
                 emptiness

           is not
                        okay

I only
love my body when a man
is inside of it.

I blame you,
I ******* blame you.

I replaced her
by putting bruises on your skin

& let me rewrite your memories
in my voice
let me retrace your

fights with my fingernails
& make them ours.

Your wet eyes look like my gemstones
or my gemstones look like
your eyes
I am not sure which.

To those who say
will this matter in a year:
yes

I have heard of scars & I have
had them

& I want to make more
than she
did on you, in the name of love.

If only ripping out a heart was like
removing the pit from a peach, I would have hundreds
in a police lineup
and could point to hers —
officer, she is the one that ruined me.

Those black spots on my lungs
was not because I smoke, rather, they came from
the time she put a cigarette lighter
to my chest and set all my love on fire.

And that kidney I am missing, it would not be the
first ***** she took
to be able to **** right onto my soul.

He wants to kiss my eyelids while I sleep
but I have none,
I have not closed my eyes for almost a year,        yet
the whole time I have been
having nightmares of burn-holes.

I have
come out from my lonely compartment
to talk to my best friend
who holds a girl
with each of his four hands —

please, best friend,

I beg
do not break any girl's heart
(she uses it to breathe
uses it to sing)

(see how whole it is, how warm it
is, how it is just yours)

having the best intentions
can't stop you from ******* ripping
a person apart.

I see now that you shared with me so much more
than what you hid,

beginning seventeen years
       eighth months ago, every day
has been our day. Even before we met we shared things
so well
if it were raining here,
I would send the storms down south to you.

The weather has so much more strength
than our anger, the earth
let me love you before my heart could catch up
and would take you away if you
ever stopped loving me

everything we share
I cannot lose when you still adore me.

When I presumed I had nothing,
I stopped living on earth. I did not want to share
anything with you
          with half a person
                  half a stranger
               a lover without lips.

Nothing was stolen from me, not exactly
rather I was a heart
that began to beat,
then stopped
midway, realizing an important piece was missing
some artery God forgot to connect.

Those days were hard work
of not running to you and asking you to
give me something
      share anything more with me than just the sun

   and I realized that even if you did not,
the sun would hurt now;
it would miss me and you could feel pain
I can't
because it was you who lost love
                (I just never had it).

I had ideas of it,
you had your favorite flakes of my skin and
thought of the inflection of my voice as a *** *****

how could I lie to you, you would say
with my hand down your pants
and it made sense. I could make
             sure you never have children,
     but I'd rather make sure you do.

The body parts we shared are not mine,
but were inside me so often
            they almost could be.

I had similes for
everything: becoming flaccid, the sun setting
scarlet cheeks like a burn
all larger than what I did not know.

I had the power to hurt you, I just didn't.
We both lied,
but I only would lie on my back
and once in a while, I pretend you did the same so
the sun does not lose us as stars
         a constellation.

          The Little Dipper
poured the same poison in our mouths
    and that has to count as
             something you did not keep from me
  (something that believed in us).

I want to fall asleep with you
inside a flower or a peach, with pits and seeds
cushioning our necks
they shall love us through their organs
like man

the difference is
that nature asks, may I love you
before they begin to.

I live as if on an airplane
suffering the clouds and clear skies
the flat lands, forests,
and skylines I almost touch the
tips of.

My wings vary
from angelic to hard metal.

When I love,
it is like throwing flowers out of a
window, which land
perfectly in a girl's hair

but I still have a *******
that I can use on you
and be
completely warranted to do so.

The sea has many ports, while I have two eyes
but a better thought is how I am
similar to a wave —
I am his, a part of his, despite
having my own composition I move for him.

Do the waves give
their water a massage, I know
I caress his heart as often as I can.

There are crystals in there
where his organs hang like chandeliers, and I
rock them even from
above his skin, above his water —
feel me as something that can be captured.

to love you
is to rid my body of all calcium

and fall limp under the
crescent of your
chin. I see how long your eyelashes
are when I look upwards

and they are so
pretty, you could not possibly
hurt me.

I hang my
bones on them, for you to water.

It is August, but the rain has got us snowed-in
and when you expect everyone
to be upset to get loud to cry cry cry
they do not. It is quiet.
The quiet hurts me (is my sort of madness).

The air outside
resembles the moon, or my skin.

In the winter,
the sidewalks look as if I have been beaten and
died coolly, flatly, quietly
on them. I am so white, I glow.
I am so sickly, I poison the grass.

But it is all very soft and silent,
I am like a pillow
too cold to rest your head on.

At night, I fall, devouring anything that I can
love —
when there is nothing,
I create the big rain, the arsenic rain
I stick to myself and everyone is hush, hush.

I am so tired of not being able to
    to touch what keeps me
         alive.

Redhead, red-handed, I think
it is the devil.

   It poppies bloom on
          my dress, here it is
    the summer of the warm-blooded.

Sometime in the future, I am
expected to have a blood clot and call it my son
my embryo
my fetus
a comet shooting from between my thighs.

I am female. Parts of me will
move on to form an extra set of toes for eighteen
years,
he may hear how unlike me he looks
why his freckles are in the wrong place:

he will learn of adoption
then become convinced that we purchased him
came gift-wrapped
in a blanket, a placenta.

My husband, another set of toes,
will bring out the belly photographs and realize
there has been a whole field of corn
metal poles threatened by
a lightning storm right on my skin ever since.

The child
   my embryo
         my fetus

the handful of cells
will ask if there are any brothers and sisters in
there, inside me.
No, son, just glowing orbs of gas
only stars:

I can hold a whole galaxy under my ribcage
but not another
nine-month long thought.

I have
turned the moon into
your skin at

at least
ten
times by now

and

I have
pretended that I can
think for her

at least
fifty.

I changed her name
to something
kids

are not
supposed to say
and adults

pretend not to know
of.

It is
a whole lot of
wishing
I have things under

control.

Everything
beautiful can
get

cavities
but nobody expects

our teeth to
fall out,
we just stay empty.

In the name of
the

girlfriend
ex-love
and holy ghost,

amen.

She doesn't miss you, she doesn't miss you
but don't worry:
he does not miss me either.

I have to wonder
if there is something I am missing,
some kind of place where lovers are taught how
to hurt one another
because everyone
I have met
so far has done a pretty great job.

i:
Yellow jackets have their nests in the ground so they can
give their stingers to everyone
below three foot tall & never feel alone.

ii:
When I die
I want to be cremated to make room for another
five foot, four inch tall girl to live.

iii:
The woman who shall love you second
will not have the same size anything as me, not even my
heart.

iv:
when will there be more people alive
than people who have
died already

v:
You breathe 25,000 times a day
& only expect to
love once in your life.

I built a home for you, out of me,
when the bricks break
it is because I have been raided. The blue sky's
not even immune to cloudbursts
the humid air lifts
to resemble some form of heartbreak.
Call it
a mushroom cloud, I go off almost nuclear.

The truth loves me enough to reveal itself
the truth loves me
even when you do not.

I've decorated the staircase with it
and discovered rope-burn,
calluses like children wanting you to just watch
what they can do
watch a ceremony. What fathers create.  

I've padded its feet
with snow, the whole summer leaks with December
and my kneecaps are rotting wood.

Creaking
using garland as a noose
you know when I walk and when I sit, the truth
cannot stand for not knowing.

I've not let it lay down either,
this ****** affair. My
walls stay white and unheard of, untouched
yours are only
the cream of glue, I should have kept the doorway
shut and tied to you with a string.
Not even the truth can dissolve over a lie
(but I can, I can, I).

But
when God smells fear, he makes it happen
and God can be
a man, a woman, a lover.

We parked down the street, passed a bunch of signs
that gave directions like "move on" "slow down" or "stop stop stop"
and when I remember this
you are telling me a story about how you
miss the woman who raised you, and I know I did not
listen to the road signs for some reason. This is it,
this is why I cannot move on (I've been left, too, more than twice).

sorry, honey, but
she is not invited to
your birthday party.

I wonder
would it help, could I fix us if I just turned the lights down
and we drown in our former selves
have *** with each other
and ourselves -

the
relationship worked better when there was more
than just the two of us.

I never wanted a man
but when I did,
his chest had to feel as soft as mine;

our *** was to be the kind
that made buds
blossom and petals fly.

Thought

he loves me
he loves me not
it doesn’t matter, he is still hot.

I could not be reminded
of a gun

when a man wanted to press me up
against a concrete wall,
I wanted
to think of bubblegum or

August rain;
soft, warm, moist things
keep-me-close sort of things.

I never wanted a man
until I met you

who had me the wettest of all things
mimicking hot tea
on the very small of your thigh

dropping leaves for

summer storms to pick up
and love us, love us not, love us.