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.

if you have seen
what i have seen,
you'd realize why
i am so mean.
if you knew all
that i know of,
you would understand
why i'm messed up.
i've been pushed
and kicked around,
yet through it all
i've made no sound.
if you have lived
a life like me
then you would know
what i have seen.

one day, i want
a death i’d like.
to visit grim
late in the night.
He’ll take my hand,
show me the light,
and i’d be ready
without a fight.
not scared of after,
of golden gates;
of God’s jury,
or new lifes wake.
i’m scared how i’ll go
but not afraid to die
as long as one day
it’s a death i’d like.