inside my professor's mailbox is
a blue journal.
  his stomach is turning on the red eye to California.
in the spring i make an A
from 150 pages of longing for a ghost.
-
inside of me at 5, there were
pinworms gnawing,
ropes of curled tails squirming around
  some gnarled beads coated
  in rust
and i cried opals on the nights i could hear them chew
right through.
inside of me were dreams of nothing.

there is some forest
where our bones grow
trunks larger than the sum of our dreams,
roots deeper than our family trees.
scattering leaves.
    green. you at 15.
    orange. me at 25.
    crushed into crisps.
-
what hands can
reach inside of me
to find heavy jars of blood, once
filled with honey.
-
in february, i cried and blamed it on the dust scattering.
i, too, blew away in the wind.
little pieces of me crumbling on the streets of carolina.

I grew inside of you,
inheriting your black hair and high cheeks.
Your mischievous mouth and sharp tongue,
cutting men into slivers.
Your lofty laughter rises as they turn the other way in shame.

I survived outside of you,
two months too early.
A fragile ember, latching onto you like tinder.
I took your strong legs and boyish stance
long strides on a path neither of us could see well.

I have your blood and your breath and your life.
Clones and clones of mitochondria.

Yours and mine, we
are each other.

But Mother, you cannot live in me,
as I did in you.
My skin is hot and burning,
my spark now a blaze.

Even the wind of your laugh
And water of your blood,
I will boil and consume until it is all vapors and dust.

a pallid fog crawls from beneath your door,
cold and slick.
sweat in winter.
the creaks of your bed springs mumble secrets to each other--
counting the morse code of your shifting weight.
    how many trickling beads have you laid?
    round pearls
    flatten against your purple palm.
he will not hear the clicks in the distance
even close,
the mist muffles waves.

i saved the unmarked bottle for the day after
when i came back to the destruction left by the hurricane of your wrath.
i could hear the clinking of glass shards you'd swept away and the whisper of a pale shadow where our picture hung the night before.

the house was empty.
i sat in the vacuum of our bedroom turning twenty stones in my hand.

one by one they fell into me like i was the bottom of a lake and they were finding home again.
we sank together in solitude,
the ebb and flow of water churning sleep songs and darkness.

at the bottom i saw colorless fish,
their bodies slack and immobile.
scales unreflecting,
like peachflesh forgotten under the sun.
only skin and seasickness.

i saw myself awake, wide eyed, entangled
in wet sleeping clothes,
fingers reaching and withdrawing,
mouth opening and closing, resigned to drown

and i saw you:
a mirage
a blurry refraction
vibrating and dreamlike
you scooped me to shore, laughing all the while.
your hand reached into my stomach
and skipped the stones into the horizon ahead.

they say love yourself more, as if it’s easy like flipping on a switch in the bedroom
and looking around to see how lovely the objects inside of you are.

the glass side table clumsily polished,
like the screen of my eyes reflecting someone’s transformed image
as it passes through and turns,
a little scratched on the corner.

the lights inside you will glow and show your true self
as if your true self is not also an object that takes in the years of
being told something else.
take down the posters that keep you covered
as if it doesn’t also peel away the paint and walls to expose your skeleton.

here is the vastness of my room,
the loveliness of my true self,
the hollowed chamber of a chest that burns,
fallen over objects,
awaiting the switch.

on the phone is a small voice.
my father calls my mother by her first name-
a title he reserves for when the world stops turning.

he is 18 hours ahead, sobbing to his wife
in a past day, and i can see his tears
dripping off his chin onto his lap,
smeared with blood and bile.
"he left us, thi,
my big brother."

her eyes flutter, she remains still and hesitant,
like ripe fruit trembling in fear of squall,
"he went happy, you were with him"
sybilline phrases or wishful-thinking prayers
echoing in his crumbling cavern heart.

he comes home the next week,
wearing his dead brother's jacket as if it were
a second skin he wishes he could live in.
he pulls it tight around, even though we are inside.

his hands are so gnarled, the knuckles of his fingers
like oak tree rings.
when he sees me looking at my own inherited dry palms and ashen wrinkles,
touching the life line to my wrist,
he presses the bark to my face
and says nothing.