i am still jealous of water—
cupped,
tucked inside
the rivulets and crescents of your palm
while your skin mimics an ocean;
but as soon as you start to take it
away,
it slips, slides, trickles—

it will be held,
bending to fit the poetry
of your hands,

but never
stolen.

—

we gathered around your hospital
bed and if i closed my eyes i could pretend
it was thanksgiving,
when the house is gold
and our hands are
pinked like bent and pale knees;

and we clasped our hands across
our nipples and you look up
and wave to god like he is
coming for you, and we touch
our nails to our chins and
make new freckles on
our skin. it withers,
lost to a sea of blood too quick
for your veins, and

we talk
as if your heart is already
gone.

—

i liked you better
yesterday,

when i could take your head in my hands
and hold it like a coin,
and your curls would fall around and
mash against me, and my palms would
be made of silvery thread and
thick skin for the rest of the day;

and when i opened my mouth and
looked to the west i could see
another universe, and i
thought that maybe,
maybe if i kept you here,
maybe if i could hold your stomach and
your nose and your mouth and your
smile, if i could hold them on
the way there then maybe
we could find ourselves somewhere,
we could find ourselves,
we could find
we could
we

and then you picked up your
head and stole my bag
of marbles and i closed my mouth
and looked down
at my feet.

—

i had that dream
about your skull again.
it rested against my feet like
a fallen apple with stray streaks
of blond cancer, the sun creating
prisons
against my bed.

and i could see your foot hanging
under the mattress with
your eyes pressed around the metal
like faint white lights,
and i was pressing tape against my chest,
sucking in my stomach until
you could feel my ribcage like a
line of polished guns.

then i took your head down to the
kitchen table and i began to kiss
the yellow spots,
and i said, "do you think i'm homely?"
and you began to make
noise from the very hollows of your bones,
like echoes down hallways inside my
ears, and i pressed my cheek
against you and you dissolved like snow
in the curve of my dimple.

when i woke up i did not think about
the blood on the ground,
splattering like the shivery paws
of cats hunting thorns,
and i did not think about the
birds that circled outside
the windows like mindful
shadows,
and i did not think about the
way your hair turned to
mush in my hands;
i think about your face and the
curves in your white cheekbones and
about how lovely you are
in the morning.

and then my head will drop and i will sob;
i wish i was a skeleton, i wish i was a skeleton—
and i wish that we could grind our hipbones
together until the dust
is no more.

i wonder what would happen if we
went outside. maybe people
would watch. i've never
made it past your
melting.

—

in my head someone is
always yelling.

"unforgivable,"
they say,
"unforgivable."

i close my eyes
to slow the
swelling.

—

mama miscarried in my lap.

i touch the fingers and
toes one by one, little lowercase
letters and folded flesh, wrinkles
on band-aid skin and tiger-lines on
flower petals,

until they take her, and
her blood flows away
like water
from my hands.