I don’t want to ever find myself apologizing to you today I am saying sorry by vomiting today I am saying sorry by not moving today your face is in my hand & I am kissing it today my body expands like lung cancer I am always writing about expanding bodies I am never not vomiting even when I am really not at all last night I got 4 hours of sleep this morning my headache is full of scraped knees today I do not move today I think about kissing you today I think that kissing you would not be very different from kissing a taxi today I think that I want to ignore you & kiss you forever & ever but I cannot do that if you ignore me today my stomach is angry at the world today I am in love with too many people today I am waiting for the world to thank me & I am waiting for an astronaut, a moon, a lit-up screen, ellipses in your rotten mouth, some beestings in my throat

Loving you is all I want.
Laying on your       chest
with a shaky softness.
The way your electricity collides         with my skin.
Your hands,     gently    exploring.

Your breath comes across my back.
Lovely are     your words,
finding their way to                 my
              lips.
Your body pressing against
mine.
Curving your shoulder,   slightly.

Your fingertips brushing            around my waist, like
waves       washing      over     me.
The feeling of your teeth      soft against       my neck
Tonight we're a sea,          your rocky rhythm       taking
       me down,
deeper.

Arching my back to        meet your moves.
My     bare      skin singing for       your warmth.
And you savor my     thighs.
Gentle are intentions.
You               trace your tongue       along my hips,
               planting flowers with your
lips.

Gripping      cold silk,
your     breath comes
hot against          my neck.
My mind pulses with
the thrilling thought of you
      rolling   over in
sheets of
             infinity.
Skipping        a beat,
your
         heart
gives in.

Leaving       fingerprints       on our      skin
                 like              beestings, and
I have never known a love
as sweet
as this.

Your legs are not mine/these legs are not mine

There is a girl somewhere (on my bed) and she is crying in me
with me
when I see you I see

flesh and her
and three people entangled like meaningless holidays
on a rough and broken couch

my body stretched out
my face wet with newborn sweat

you compared what happened with us to a birth
but this is cold stinging your throat

we are like childhood beestings

we will always be
like childhood beestings

All my potions turn pink
Like my tongue
After too much candy.

I can't bring myself to ***** my finger,
Let the blood bubble in the mix.
I can't handle newt's anything.
I can't even balance on my broomstick.

I am a bad witch.

People are afraid of me,
But's that's mostly my lipstick shade.
My pale skin
And sharp teeth
Aren't seductive,
Or menacing.

I speak in tongues
And girls wink at me!
My hexes are beestings
I am beat.

Nothing helps rejection
Like a little hair of the dog.
Maybe cat whiskers, too.

Or apple cider,
If you can't handle
A proper witch's brew.

Spiders shy away from me,
Bats blow on by.
Cats don't cuddle up to me,
My broom can't help me fly.

And then I see her.

Hair like cobwebs,
Nails like fangs,
Candy red lipstick,
A sugar rush in my veins.

She put a spell on me.

She repressed a grin,
Barely bared her teeth,
Squinted her eyes,
Put her mouth near my cheek...

She whispered to me,

"Your hat is floppy,
Your elixirs- what rot!
Your call is sloppy
I like it a lot."

She gave me a kiss,
Turned me into a witch,
In supernatural bliss...

Now this is real magic.

Home again I hid underneath blankets
like a kingfisher and waited for you
for hours, until eventually the clock
stopped working and my father had
to come in to get me up and turn on
the light and put on the air conditioning.

It was 83 degrees the day I came back,
heat swelling from the ground the way
your cigarettes did, dangling from
the fingers of your left hand like old puppets.
Later that hand would find its way into
my body and I’d go numb. That first night back

you read to me the way my father always
did; you were best at making me feel
like I was three years old all over again,
vulnerable as the rats quietly roaming
our ghostly wet basement. You read Narnia
until I began to sleep. I hated my snores
but you pressed my face to your stomach
so that I could hear the beestings that roamed there.

Look, they’re like yours, you wanted to say, but you
never knew how. You could never hammer
words the way most could, but you still
made me ache like the high school chorus:
goose bumps against arms against desks,
shivering all over again underneath ceilings
instead of skies.

it hurts to breathe it hurts to breathe screaming ‘oh god it hurts to breathe’//this feels like a birth this feels like I’m giving birth//everything hurts to breathe & to move my stomach feels like piles of childhood beestings & my throat like tired eyes//it feels like your body is on top of mine again & I want to scream & I am screaming so why does nobody hear me//my roommate is right next to me in her bed yet she does not hear me//everybody is on top of me & I am screaming prayers again ‘it hurts to breathe it hurts to breathe’//it hurts to breathe so much I am not pregnant but oh god it feels like I am//like I am giving birth to the antlers of road ****//my belly pulsing like the abdominal region of a manta ray//ghostghostghostghost everybody jeering ‘ you are a ghost’ everybody making fun of me ‘you are a ghost’ & it hurts to breathe but I am not pregnant & you are not on top of me you will never be on top of me bruising me or my neck or my collar bones (which don’t always feel there)//us in cars listening to sad songs//us in cars listening to ‘i’m never going to understand’ listening to elvis depressedly all summer long//something seems so ****** up about that like I’m trying desperately to sound hip but I’m not I swear to ******* god I’m not (**** me **** me over **** me//but don’t//because I never want to feel your hip bones scraping against mine again//your hip bones were so sharp your hip bones they ******* hurt I was in so much pain back then)//your car in the summer felt like a desert church

1:

i am very much done w/ the way
my body feels
up all night
lying flat in bed
thinking of how u might look
carved into soft moonlight

#2:

ur face reminds me
of my chest from when
i was 13 yrs old & waiting
in agony for something
more mountainous to seize
what was flat

#3:

i see the way u look
at me when we r at
a friend’s n-w that i have
stopped paying attention 2 u
pls stop looking at me as tho
there were nettles in ur
throat, beestings in ur lap!

late at night the kitchen 
sheds its skin for you 

outside your bedroom door
kneels your mother, flat & round
like a subway 

later you will kneel, too,
then sleep in your bed
as though nothing is wrong but

your hair grows thin & ***** 
as beestings & your body 
won't stop tearing itself & ballooning
out at the seams 
& sometimes on the bus your throat 
is as full & tight as a hot lake 
& you're hoping that you'll 
have nightmares that will 
make you cry in your sleep