i want to be so sweet
that every tooth in your mouth cavitates
and hangs from your gums
from a thin-threaded vein.
i want to be so sweet
that the sugar in your blood
spoils and rots your organs
clotting your vessels
and plaquing your bones.
i want to be so sweet that
all the touch and taste you endure in this world
infects every inch of your mind
with the thought of me.
when the thick honeyed glaze
coats your mouth,
and the candied composition fills your lungs;
like a disease i won’t leave,
even when you grow sick and try to throw up
your sweet heart.

my bed is a sanctuary;
an escape to paradise.
my heart is barb-wired
stuck somewhere deep inside.
my mom's voice is a lullaby
my dad's hands are calloused.
the freckles on my face are from
an angel's gentle kiss.

my sister is a mirror,
what she reflects is what i see.
my notes app is a diary
of who i used to be.
my house is quiet;
down a schoolyard, up a hill.
i'm fighting just to breathe,
so i don't understand the thrill.

i am made of stars
and the fire in my hair;
of the strings of my guitar,
and the whispers in the air.
my heart is in a cage,
stuck inside my ribs.
half of me is truth
and half is just a fib.
i’m forming into someone else.
i will not be the same.
i'm scared but i try
to conquer the change.

spritzing a cat will make it hiss.
it will scratch with persistence
and bite, despite resistance.
calloused hands never stop
even when they reach soft skin.
they just continue to hurt you
with tears in their eyes.

sink your teeth inside of me
and **** out everything you need.
until my vein canals are dried of blood,
until i am prune and ragged,
until i am nothing more than skin attached to bone.
take it from me, take it all.
until i am lifeless.
stick to my flesh and never let go.

i want to peel your skin back
and reveal your deepest sweetness.
to look at your veins
and memorize their paths.
maybe then i’d understand
why you are so rough on the outside.
it takes a lot of work,
digging your fingernails into the flesh,
pulling and pulling until you are bare.
but it is all worth it;
to visit your center,
to break past what conceals you,
and take you apart
slice by slice.

when the tectonic plates shift
there will be a hole in the world
and in time, maybe,
it will fill with magma
from the heart of the earth.
it will cover the trenches
that were created within the disaster
and the smoke will clear
so that we can see the sun again.
there will still be volcanoes
they’ll erupt and disrupt
and the earthquakes will shake
until all we have left is rubble
and telephone poles that have vines slithering
up them like a cold snake searching for the sky.
the landslides will then fall
and tsunami’s as tall as the appalachians will crash down
washing away the hurt and the sin
that is embedded in our bones
carved into our marrow rings
like initials on a tree.
but when it is calm
we will pat dust off our jeans
and ring water from our hair.
we will turn around
to look at the everything that is now nothing
and all we'll see is each other.

i stand here waiting
down in the cold mud
gravity pulling me
back down to earth.
naked, ******,
vulnerable, bear,
my body is not mine.

she stands across
the lone river bend
my species, my kind,
my enemy and friend.
she is alone, a small rock in a pond.
she sits and stares
her body is not hers either.

down in a large boat
a broad man arrives
He sets down his anchor,
to her He strides.
He picks her up, throws her
down, down, into his prison.
His palms guide him to what he owns.

i still stand here waiting
for my own turn to be
on a boat, far away,
in a place of a dream.
my eyes find the sharp ridges
that young boat had endured.

it belongs to a man
made from the soft skin of a tree
he stripped it bare, nailed it down
so it would never be free
the boat and me naked
our bodies not ours.