1.
the curious way she threw off her shoes
in her mother's foyer before peeing
on the floor told me the entirety of her
childhood. the rug near the door was covered
in dirt, the rest of the home immaculate. I imagined
her mother , the cleanest earlobes
in the neighborhood
2.
i want to make love to the man who lives in my
apartment.
3.
at night i can hear someone in the bath
whose nose is bleeding and whose ears are
ringing with celestial verse. this person is not
my lover, and otherwise, i live alone.
4.
she locked the key to her own treasure chest,
and blamed us all for not having the key.
5.
when i am done writing my book, i know
the pages will be blank, and the hearts of
those i tried to love will be bleeding. don't
take that as an excuse to cry. please laugh
in my absence---for nothing matters--and
nothing ever will.
6.
my backyard was the door to a pinball
machine, and dandelions always tasted
well.
7.
my brother's eye turned purple under
my shoe.
8. when i use your razor to shave the
skin of my uterus, i always try and
put it back where you left it.
9.
when i was seven, i made out with the
walls in my room. later i discovered the bedposts.
10.
i want to pay him to cut my hair so i can smell
his hands and think of our children. i want to pay
him to cut off my fat, so i can swim in a river
of blood to the alter.
11.
the seventeen year old who spins on the blue
mats at a karate school in brooklyn is young
and needed. i can't help but cry when he lands
and doesn't think of anything but landing.
12.
cut me like a star so the crux of humanity
leaks all over my cancerous hands and allows
me to accept this. all of it.
13.
the veins in her face were the color of the sky.
she never eats without vomiting.
14.
to sleep next to you is to sleep next to eternity.
i wish only to here your final conscious breath,
and to place my heart in your feet.
