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

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

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

so this night, I set stars heavy on my brow

and paint my lips with ash

a courting ritual, a lady’s rite—

my warpaint is the lean of my hips,

my sword, the word of gods in my mouth.

yea, I will rule thee

like the sea of my birth

and the snows of my forests,

and you will think it is you who are king.

my warpaint is the curve of my throat,

my sword, the feather-touch of fingers.

do not think that I will hesitate

to take what is divine right.

the splendor,

the agony,

the death

is mine.

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

smell of chlorine

smell of safety, of *** education, of climbing fences and

scuffing sneakers on concrete steps and

shedding clothes

smell of boy

floating across from me, staring

at my mouth and my limbs.

It is simple for you to walk here.

It is simpler for me to swim.

you are bumping your feet against dead fireworks

left empty on the pool bottom--

diving underwater to find the unfamiliar shapes,

holding them up

in the light of the still-awake apartment windows

that reflect like fireflies on the ripples we leave—

and I am a runaway teenaged mermaid

finding my legs,

learning how to climb out of the glowing blue and walk

when treading water was so easy.

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’m going up and up, like hands

twining over heads in the lights and the smoke,

weaving into the music their own song

of tendon on tendon and rushing arteries.

if I lean my head back, you are there

and the melody is stronger, wilder,

begging tentatively to be touched

like a feral animal just beyond my fingers.

behind me, you are a mountain.


I lift my hands and I pray.

my insides creak, like glacier

sliding past glacier, touching

with the raw ache of same

scraping same

and becoming less



and you are gently touching

the stars embedded into my shoulders

like opals, or aquamarines—

but never diamonds

(because diamonds are too precious)—

and you are hurting me…

I want you to touch more, this is not enough,

this is too slow for my heartbeat,

a fever-pulse



everything is embarrassing—

the night tangles itself around telephone poles

and I feel ashamed of how it clings to everything;

stars arching like a back, in slow motion.

my mouth hurts, like I’ve tasted

something I shouldn’t have.

curled lying prone and
humming hot, like a wire--
thrumming, like a thread
upon which water falls. I am aching
and oversensitive
holing a howl up inside me
and feeding it to my fears

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.

call me closing moonflower,

mist-skinned,

call me early morning dewdreaming

waking up softly

and blinking through the pearls on the spiderwebs.

call me silverbreathed,

stretching out like the yawn of a cat

pale pink-tongued

and waiting

to be kissed

how do I tell you how afraid I am

of the air in between us when you untangle yourself from me—

how do I tell you that the sweat evaporating on my skin

chills me like linoleum hospital floors,

like january lakes and mountains



and I am snow, but please,

let me melt under you

i want to say something haunting and profound

about the twisting in my abdomen

and the red stain blooming between my legs—

but all I can think about is how far ******* gone I am

and how much it hurts to be a 19 year old girl

with a brain like a jagged seashell

grow me inside a glass dome

warm and safe

hidden away from nightmares,

and acid rain,

and fingers that pry and poke and

wilt my fragile leaves with their heat



grow me inside a jar

that you seal with peach-sticky hands,

and when the juice drips in

I will thrive on the sweetness,

and kiss it back up to you

with my summer-slick mouth