the Turkish coffee cup
shards on the floor
draw blood.that delicate porcelain
holds eighty-two years of life,
wrinkled hands, cardamom
coffee-stained
smiles and desert air;
a shattered mirage on
hard, cold kitchen
tile.a thousand fangs,
they draw blood and make
home in the soles
of my feet.
you were famished
from birth, waiting for
this world to give you your fill.
i tripped into your arms,
you came in for the kill.you bite
with ravenous lips
and starving eyes;
part of you is born and
part of me dies.
we can’t build a castle
from these ruins.
a foundation of rubble and sand
will disintegrate in
the slightest wind,
we will always be nothing
again.
i want to see all of you,
every inch. every
mountain, every forest,
every ocean, every river
and canyon. i want to know
every mark on the map,
and i want to fall in love
with all of it.
i want to see and know
this is where i belong.
that you are a part of me
as much as i am a part of you.
you make me feel
something scary and
yet so comforting,
consuming. you are
a contradiction,
a recipe for disaster,
and yet i love you.
perhaps instinct
trumps common sense
in matters of the
heart.
perhaps my fear of
intimacy
will melt under your lips
and i will let you run them all over me.
your breath, warm
milk and roses.
your arm, a barrier
for intruders-separating
us from the world.
i don’t know
the time or where
i am or what i was
supposed to be doing;
i only know
your heartbeat, the heat of
your lips, warm
milk and roses.
Don’t worry when you get lost along the way; retrace your steps and you will always find yourself again.
I. EVACUATION
run
without thinking.
let your feet slap
the pavement. you need
to get out of here before
they burn you alive.
i know it hurts. sometimes
you have to
save yourself first.II. VIRGINITY
no footprints in the snow.
you’ve not yet learned to
not let everyone in.III. BLESSED CHILD
you’ve been vandalized
you throw your body
off of cliffs
so you can know how
it feels to fly.
you’re branded and scarred,
and you only know
how to smile.
the best time to write is when
i’m sorry or sleepy because
the words flow unapologetically–
they do not try so hard to sound good.there is a drum in the front of my brain,
and I don’t know if it’s
because of the rain or the way
the dentist drilled my gums today.it is empty in the house, but too loud
with my mother’s anxieties,
and the air is heavy with tears
that are shed once the lights go out–
shed like room for growth and
thicker walls–
shed like hair, like skin,
to make room for
something new and healthy and strong.what do we shed with our tears?
our weakness? our pain?
you find the ingredients
to lose yourself
in the kitchen cabinets.
in twelve hours with coconut oil,
a chopstick and a fork,
you unkink your hair and
lose a piece of yourself in
the air that blows between the doorways
of the only home you’ve ever known.you’re down a limb, and you can
feel its phantom
brushing up against your body,
trapped
within these same walls.you shut the door quickly
when you leave so
that it cannot escape.
it has to stay inside.
you want to visit sometime
soon.
Silenticel 