Take me into the closet again
beat me with your leather book of
fallacies, conflicting messages strewn across pages
of decades
by faulted scribes, spitting glossolalia
into young children

keep the food from me, I do not need it
as I am only a child of 8
a coldness clenched my hot little body
as I drew rusty nail across pale little arm
the first time, i thought myself to be a god
your Jesus took away my sinful love
for the girl at church.
I will take it away with this nail
i tear it away
as a cold rain runs over my fire
my insides scream as my emotions numb
flightless bird am I, trapped in the nest

all I wanted was anything.

I stand small in this moment
as you lie to the school nurses about my
bruise
       but in the next I am
Tallest for my struggle.
I recall every dark night
starved and worn
barred from the world, I found solace in
a rusty nail
the neighbour's dogs
the asymmetrical patterns in the carpet
the littlest flower
because that was all I could see
from my closet
window,
and that was only when I was tall enough to reach.

I do not know how to get lost in you.

You trail your frozen fingertips across my arms and curl me close to you and smile, making jokes and creating your own nonsense words and phrases, drawing me in to your almost-black eyes.

I laugh at your imagination and rub your wrists as you draw circles on the back of my hands and lean on me, letting me relax into you.

Yet, I do not know how to deal with a boy who doesn't constantly try to touch more intimate places, who doesn't constantly talk about *** and isn't always asking for more.

I do not know how to deal with your tender compliments and small smiles and how you always say being cute is a personality trait, too.

All in all, I do not know how to deal with you, my only place to rest besides in words.

But I can try.

and now that i can no longer stand myself, i find solace in you.

dark eyes and dark hair and long legs and artists hands, all pale skin and a lanky figure stretched across my couch, gesturing and laughing and resting a cold arm across my shoulders.

tips of fingers tracing across my own flesh like slim ice cubes, soothing and tickling at once, and my pulse finally slows and i get lost in someone else for awhile.

you plan to get high on easter and nearly every other day, you rarely speak but let soft touches and tight hugs convey what you can't say.

you told me you had never loved anyone and may never love anyone, and your favorite memory is of a cat you had as a child.

you smiled, but your eyes were black holes.

Cinnamon peppers
the rooftops in December
and the shattered
whispers over the hills.

It makes you sneeze
and your fingers
freeze
which causes
evermore solace
with the warming fumes
of myrrh.

The bubbles
which circle the edge
of your tea, darling,
pop on your nose
as the steam rises

we sit in rose,
while outside
the horizon is smudged
with ash, and coal
and dirt.