hungry heart
sore eyes
your hands
are like turpentine
you've wiped away the
years i've made,
the work of my mother
you'll make a home
in another,
you feed
to devour
what's missing from
your heart.
your scabs heal too
fast for you to know
what   you
did wrong in the first
place

you taste like a garden
bright, like basil
so your scent stains
my fingers,
and when I pluck you
you infuse my palms.
you remind me of summers
100 years ago
and still you smell like you always have
you've sat by my sink
and by my grandmother's window.
grown countless times
from clay pots filled richly.
i've muddled you,
pulsed you
blended, baked
you've filled my home
my skin,
but i can't find myself in you.
how, when you've been here with me for
Years and years and years

I should know myself by now
You've been with me all the while.

which layer would you take away
to mold yourself now
to stop your shoulders from rounding
to stop yourself from losing
your heart.

which year would you burn,
who would you have slept with,
tied legs and arms with
in linens

which piece would you move. who
would you have loved harder
if you had the heart
and weren't bound this way

the last time i felt you
snow covered the mountains
and i was lost somewhere between
home and a river.

i almost ran from you.
across the sea and to a dreary
london.
i found the sunlight there.
even mid-december would have felt more
like home than there with you.
the day i felt you leave me,
you let me.


no river of yours can take me home.
you will never carve your path in mine
i am stronger than even your ocean

you're made of mist and you don't know it

it's so easy how i fold to you,
like silk melting over me.
you smell like your mouth and
feel like an ocean.


i can't begin to feel you.
you hold my neck and call me a
goddess.
you cup my ears and tell me
you've begged for me
i don't believe you. i don't know you yet.

you kissed me and i didn't kiss you back