the crevices and buttonholes of a landmine:
              "hey, kid, what are you playing
              that for, my word kid, don't you
              ever get tired of breaking bottles
              over your back? kid, kid, i can
              see you through the walls, you
              can see your big fluorescent shadow;
              you scream at nighttime, i can hear
              you, kid, you yell in big loud gulps,
              and you never ever shut up, i can
              hear you in the floors, sometimes
              i cower in the corners of the living
              room, in all the little green spaces,
              and i yell your name back to you,
              sometimes i reach over and touch my
              dead carpet and whistle, and only
              then, kid, only then do you response.
              what are you playing that for, kid?"


[should i call you mister? should i call you sir?
those fingers are pearled, those fingers will make
ribbons out of me; i think i can see my stomach
in that one, the one tied up in purple.]


the universe in protest:
  shattered thumps, your old glass figurines and the books
  you read on grandma's train, her old fragile hair lines that
  have melted into words doctors like to carry around on
  their tongues, dogs waggling behind with sorry faces and
  the marks of childhood adorable, cameras used to shoot
  from my eyelids, age was never a disease, age was never
  a sickness, age is something you stand behind, a cardboard
  pattern and the texture of birds and roses, the smell of
                     mommy, tell me i was born beautiful,
                           mommy?


[i ate in fistfuls when i was a child. i was always
hungry, i was always starving. i always made my
teeth, my fingers, on the food first; i left holes, impre
ssions, i left marks and dents and injuries. i bled my
sandwiches until my hands were a sticky scarlet; i rip
ped chips apart into small squares, and i wore away
at candies, chocolates with the soles of my teeth, until
they were numb with scratch marks. my food was alw
ays mutilated, and my food could never, ever, raise a
hand against me, and could never tell me that one black
word, that one little catastrophic syllable. my soul.]


making love vs. having sex:
              it's quiet. lovers weave
              into the air until their limbs
              are lost in it, legs patterned
              in a sort of sinuous dance:
              i never wanted to observe,
              it was so sickeningly loud,
              so terribly subtle, so gracious
              and so, so disgusting.
                                          the noise is clubbed.
                                          it's all cheekbones and
                                          furry legs and big, big
                                          white spaces, these big
                                          blanks where maybe love
                                          and euphoria should be;
                                          she yells, he cries, it drowns,
                                          and i am whole.                             you don't know me.
                                                                                                  you don't know me at all.


[i wanted to learn to play the piano. my fingers were
made for numbers and i thought in small little fragments
of whole thoughts, in little tiny bits and pieces; and it was
through these that i knew, i knew, i was made for notes, i was
made for the rhythmic sounds: i could close my eyes and hear my
heart, and i knew there was music in me, somewhere, and that through
a piano, i would be able to type out those chords and strings through my arms,
i would play those elephant-tusk keys until my fingers bled with the music, my veins
burst in a jolting crescendo, it would well up and i would be able to grasp a dying man's yelp
with my fingers and mold it into a beautiful, beautiful sound, something the world would listen to
and smile, collectively. something that could live in me and out of me, as one, as one big beautiful piece.
                                                                                                                                    i never learned.]


when rainbows die:
              she was one of those people
              who believed in things like souls,
              little beads of blushing, sweating
              light that lived in the space next
              to your heart. they glowed, they
              were crimson and water and black
              wires, like everyone had some sort
              of good core and all these little evil
              lines dotting the outside, pinpricks and
              points and ugly little dancing strangers
              in your house, in your car, tearing your
              eyes apart. i am the space above your
              nose, the wrinkles on your toes, the
              scratches on your cd, the frames on
              your mantle, but mostly i am the photo
              of that sad and crying boy, holding a
              graying stone in his hands, a plate of
              dying wine and bread next to him. some
              call him jesus, but i'm not so arrogant.
                            and she told me my soul must be green.
                                          what does that even mean?


[i grew apples in my spare time. my hair grew out,
i got a plaited orange glow, my backyard turned
pink and brown, and i would take an apple in
each hand, soaked in melancholia, and i'd
imagine making stews, clothes, candies,
out of these delicate jewels; but i'd
smash in with my big angry aches,
my upset yellows, and i'd tear
and see the little stars inside
i'd broken apart, like i had
the whole universe in my
teeth, a whole crystal
wedged in me.
and for the first
time, it made me
feel like something
more than a person with
gangly arms and thick legs,
something with a whole universe
inside, something who could hold butterflies
and walk on walls, something with small and wispy
hands, something with a curve to their face, something
with a majesty on their forehead, some sort of crownless
ruler of all things flitting and all things blackened: i was a thing
of forbidden power, of a pulsating conscience, of big wide blued eyes
and God’s small smiles, with the sun in my stitched fingers. something pretty.]


the belief of miracles:
              she was the kind who believed
              in miracles, and i was the kind
              with very pale arms, who talked
              to a little boy through the walls on
              the floor, who grew apples out of
              pianos in his dead mother's backyard,
              and with a soul made of green and apple stars.