I am not your ghost.
Swallow my liver
like I’m a fire demon
and hold it hostage
in your mutable citadel.
Your hearth is my life
is my home is my prison.
Don’t expect my bile
to turn into diamonds.
You should have taken
my heart when offered.
You could have crushed
carbon and soil,
resilient and fresh.
I might be a meteoroid
but I am clever enough
to know when I’m being caught
or when I’m being torn asunder.
Go back and tell me
not to find you.

The heart is the heart because it wants to be.
The paste and cement are cunning
and clever and selfish.
Dance circles around the lungs
and you’ll never realize that you have
not actually touched them.
(years and years, how could you never notice that you
pull back before actually placing yourself within them?)
They won’t notice until later
when they ache for hands upon ribcage.
For now, believe you are making contact
when you’re really just taking
and breaking. All of us are blind.
The best fakers are the ones who
don’t even realize they’re faking it.

I met you when you owned a universe.
You were a pitiless empress and I made pies for the sake of pie making.
After a season of orchard trysts
(a queen picking apples! The world would talk.)
you requested a pastry of my heart.

So I carved it out and baked it in and cut my hair for the latticework.
If you want to satisfy your gluttony, the directions are here.
The filling calls for apple cores.
Make sure you use the ones in the very back of the grove
on the ground where you nudged my knee with
yours as we gorged and gossiped.

Sprinkle a little dirt on it, sweetheart. Don’t be afraid to get adventurous
and use the outdated milk and don’t sift out those sugar ants from the bag.
Knead the crust with your elbows, don’t use the hands that would pet my hair
as I lay in your lap.
Crawl to the oven, cut out your heart with a paring knife
(no royalty to buy you a clean blade) and toss it in.

Bake it at the degree of your contempt for me now.
Don’t sear the top with your temper, darling.
Act meek enough and eat your ******* pie.

I am hungry.
We hold our hands up together and create a world.
If I could breathe I would tell you it’s all going to be okay, that
one day this place won’t be imaginary and we will finally feel anchored
and free.
We’ll lounge on pavement, soak up the heat and shuffle bare feet through grass.
The others will be invited and our earth will sponge up the anxiety at our knees
and trees will plant themselves where anger falls.
The ebb and flow of the sky will be comfortable and balanced
and the givers won’t give until they’re empty, the takers won’t take until they’re bloated.
We’ll see each other for what we are,
and we will allow the spaces between us to fill with sand and soft thoughts.
I am hungry for you. For her hands, for his voice, for our goodness and a balance that is no longer delicate, but sure and strong.
I am hungry for hands to hold mine, but not hold me down
because I like to pretend I am free and
not bound to giving up my own hands
when a need rises up from someone else’s ashes.
And you should feel the ground,
it should be steady beneath your legs and you should
hear your pulse and footsteps as real, and alive, as you are in the tiny glimpses I get when you are truly joyful, here and now.
It won’t be a bubble or a prison. There will be a sky,
and a world with us in it.
We won’t be hungry anymore and we will breathe.

I want to push on the plushness of your face and tell you all the ways you make me smile.
Your voice is a drop of warm honey, fresh from the comb, settling into my stomach. You have turned my heart into a hexagon of wax.
And when you laugh I can hear bees humming home home home home.

There’s a give in here. A give I hand to you,
a slacking of rope or tautness of need or demand that I offer begrudgingly.
I act like there’s nobility, but I have no wings to carry me above the likes of you
and we both know I want too much to begin with.

You are a hot blade, an inevitable change, something that will fade or drift from me and I will continue to grasp for you throughout my life.
I will grab and grab and come up with empty hands.
I will be ninety and still clutching outward, gnarled fingers searching for you.

Your softness is mine in my head. I am probably delusional.
I will always be delusional. Someone too insecure, too needy, too much, but never good enough for you.
You keep rising like the sun and I am keening and bending toward you like a woman at worship. You are not all of me, but you are a part of me.
I want to keep you.
I wish I could lock you up inside my breast. I want to cage you within my ribs
and let you flower there, collecting your petals in my stomach until you fill me.
Until I am old and full of crisp, browning flora.
Let me help you grow. Let me push you upwards and out. I want to unlock all of you.
I will give you all of me, a gift of trust and rawness.

Unwind yourself and curl up within me.

You are out of reach to me.
Sometimes we meet and my chest collides with yours and my stomach pushes against the softness of yours and we are just as close as if we could actually hug or press against one another.
We find a likeness or a difference that becomes an adhesive.
I think sometimes you resent me for holding on too tight.

You’re a warrior,
armed with cinder block walls.
Sister legionnaire with fingers stuttering
down my spine.
You are a helical path across my clavicle,
the sun filled A-frame in my gut.
You are the space between my head on the pillow
and my feet on the floor.
You are a well for me to pour into.
I want to drink from your hands and know you.
I want to find your face on the surface
and slip down
until I meet the siren.
I want to touch your face, nape, arms
and have license to explore you.
You are the bottom of a hot spring,
slippery stone and encompassed warmth.
I bare my neck to your teeth
and urge you to share the weighted things
you think about at night.
Breathe at my neck and shoulder, then
learn to exhale.
You are carrying too much, Kindred,
it will drag you down.