I feel your fingers
in everything that I do
the way the sprout feels decay
and struggles to turn it into life

I walk along the interstate like Eurydice by the river
streaming and stinging lights, come-home and
go-away lights, lights like firefly streaks looped on repeat
then the dream dips and I am underneath
where the blue becomes black and concrete wears thin

the factory is vast and empty, hollow like a ribcage
without organs, and my dress is too thin
where is my armor? where is my sword, my arrows
or bow? there are hands everywhere, disembodied
and moving through the darkness, touching my shoulders
and my lips and my pale closed eyelids like moths
they lead me so politely and I am lying down on the machine
now, I am giving myself to it

somewhere I cannot see, a fire is burning
I can smell its heat on the air and the way it is hungry
like a pig rooting through wet earth
or a man

off-beat, head wobbling, knobby
girl-knees and small hands. too small.
I put everything of the world inside my body
and turn it into tiny green sprouts

the white glow from street signs at night

a cupped palmful of water and fish scales

falling from my half-open mouth and rising up
around me to swirl through my hair like a fever dream
and dissolve back into starmilk

he told me every night to close the window
but I just wanted it open in case I needed someone to hear me scream

I want to get better
no, I want to feel that dizzy spinning medicine
rising up along my spine and turning everything
into rolling moonlines following my eyes

I only need to change
if I can't even laugh when I'm drunk anymore

I wear all the flowers
I never lie
I'm your baby girl, stumbling and clinging to your side
I stare sick at the shape of men's shadows in the streetlights
when I scrape my knees on the asphalt my smile is wild and your hands
could be all over me but right now they just hold mine

give me one more shot for courage
before you open up my insides

newly-birthed
by the sea and the sand,
I am pink and
delicate, an exposed nerve,
a soft flushed child-animal.
where I walk it is sensitive--raw,
but the pain is so clean
and good
that it is almost pleasure.