because chasms //// we are given //// have often meant war //// i cannot call you my darling //// & forget my amerika
has been wintered //// by your sunlight //// how even color //// has been made a shot //// calling my body all thorn
to crop you //// all bloom //// you who have been born given space //// to ossify against night
know how my body mirrors night //// know how night was made a shard //// because it cast my reflection
how the living ask us to arrow ourselves ////striking cartoon red targets ////so blood heavy
how the living//// ask a forgetting ask me to wear the distance between nothing ///// & something to island my body
o how i tessellate with shards //// putting beauty to ground //// slicing projections of absence on the horizon of my mouth
i am cut to silence//// holding blades under tongue ////blades too big for a body //// too big for a world
i cannot fold myself easy white linen soft //// into the frame that loving you means disowning myself //// ribs of a tree
hallowed of its sweet //// my soul on trial ripped of sinewy detail //// made edible from inaccuracies
my body a piñata of caged sirens ///// where ancestral amnesia //// left somatic residue //// left me to pin time
to the railing of a hospital bed //// flung against
white washed walls
left me privately in struggle / left trees falling in my head / left my skull taut / blood thickening in my throat / left me
a body punched clean of story //// left me with express philosophy //// watching white lightning //// slit into night deadly
undo the spool of sanity so evenly butter knife spread //// a wisp of sustenance //// on manufactured mold //// some call bread
yes everything outside of us told me not to go & fall in love with you
said there are cultivated seeds rotting me clean
i lie a jagged stone
pierced into an ocean bed
washed & washed & washed
brewing in blue
i wear the veil
threatening to leave my arms a gradient of erosion
everywhere your papier-mâché hands
match my burning body
your palms clasped around the fullness of my face
sunlight glancing at me
i stare & watch all else curtain into black
lying in an unhinged bed not of this world
how your fingers run & tap my waters
rake the icing from my insides
our hands laced thins me out swifter than a pencil eraser taking to paper
i could only say yes i am to hold salt a lemon rind sealing my
mouth acrid honey
fleshed out enough to be mentioned
how am i to forget the kaleidoscope pouring from me only you
caught vision of
how we hold the jackets our bodies have been shaped into
live outside the line we are told to straighten our backs against & rise for
has been wintered //// by your sunlight //// how even color //// has been made a shot //// calling my body all thorn
to crop you //// all bloom //// you who have been born given space //// to ossify against night
know how my body mirrors night //// know how night was made a shard //// because it cast my reflection
how the living ask us to arrow ourselves ////striking cartoon red targets ////so blood heavy
how the living//// ask a forgetting ask me to wear the distance between nothing ///// & something to island my body
o how i tessellate with shards //// putting beauty to ground //// slicing projections of absence on the horizon of my mouth
i am cut to silence//// holding blades under tongue ////blades too big for a body //// too big for a world
i cannot fold myself easy white linen soft //// into the frame that loving you means disowning myself //// ribs of a tree
hallowed of its sweet //// my soul on trial ripped of sinewy detail //// made edible from inaccuracies
my body a piñata of caged sirens ///// where ancestral amnesia //// left somatic residue //// left me to pin time
to the railing of a hospital bed //// flung against
white washed walls
left me privately in struggle / left trees falling in my head / left my skull taut / blood thickening in my throat / left me
a body punched clean of story //// left me with express philosophy //// watching white lightning //// slit into night deadly
undo the spool of sanity so evenly butter knife spread //// a wisp of sustenance //// on manufactured mold //// some call bread
yes everything outside of us told me not to go & fall in love with you
said there are cultivated seeds rotting me clean
i lie a jagged stone
pierced into an ocean bed
washed & washed & washed
brewing in blue
i wear the veil
threatening to leave my arms a gradient of erosion
everywhere your papier-mâché hands
match my burning body
your palms clasped around the fullness of my face
sunlight glancing at me
i stare & watch all else curtain into black
lying in an unhinged bed not of this world
how your fingers run & tap my waters
rake the icing from my insides
our hands laced thins me out swifter than a pencil eraser taking to paper
i could only say yes i am to hold salt a lemon rind sealing my
mouth acrid honey
fleshed out enough to be mentioned
how am i to forget the kaleidoscope pouring from me only you
caught vision of
how we hold the jackets our bodies have been shaped into
live outside the line we are told to straighten our backs against & rise for