originally published on 25 MAY 2018
in the past few days I’ve learned that when you burn valentine’s day cards never given / it smells a little like campfire stories / and when you send them down the creek the bamboo trees bend down / green as June in these faded paper woods / to shield you from the half moon watching / I watched red and pink construction paper hearts dissolve in my hands / tried not to think about how maybe I’m just like the stars / burnt out for all I know I’ve watched her break / wanted to kiss the crook of her elbow / with those claw marks from that three fingered thing called hurt / watched the way she took all our heart fractions, added hers to the collection / like a mosaic of ache to make one whole heart / we cut off her hair and collected it in a box / cut off every part of her he’s touched / I packed the bowl like communion / placed it in her hand / she said she wishes it was summer / so the air wouldn’t be so heavy / like a body we lay beneath / like looking over a shoulder at the stars
i wrote this when i still loved you
you ask me “what is life if not a mess?” / my reply: “boring” / one night you came home in tears because you froze up at the bar / he always used to order your drinks for you
if you cut us open / you’d find heart heart heart / like worms / our bodies are the jars the surgeons put the defective hearts inside / formaldehyde baptism
one day you’ll sew yourself up / like a mother sewing the clothes of her clumsy children / one day you’ll order yourself a drink
first time you break me like twig underfoot I am cherry crushed on your tongue metallic nectar swallowed seed and all you held down the wrist of the upper hand you buried yourself in me like a child hiding from demons beneath down comforter I am feather pillow body I am bruised fruit dripping sex appeal stripped to core peach falling off pit like clothes falling off skin would have let you cut off my Sunday best with your two hundred dollar knife would have let you toss me around like salt over your shoulder for good luck but you’re distant as midnight train whistle heard through window screen I’m overfed sprite,clipped wing sprite swollen with failed attempts to find something as sweet as your mouth that sugared reed wood taste I’m open wound between thighs grave you dug but never filled
dreamgirl black light ballerina / your date palm leaf eyelashes like willow branch canopy / lines of coke on dollhouse coffee table / I see you—all cigarette ash and glitter / drifting like sundust / porcelain heart / cabaret doll, cabaret red lips / I know it’s just cherry popsicle, but I won’t tell