paper

peeling origami skin up, underneath

paper fingers, petals

I told myself I folded

placed razor snips under layered pages

red ribbons to find later

yellow-edged and creases under my eyes

I told myself for years

I folded

maybe I was wrong, maybe

I was crooking crane wings under elbows

maybe I was paper airplane ready

maybe I have only been in the wrong hands

milk

white, will you wake with

me smoothed into your mouth still

round cream reminding you what softness means

wait until I drip, then

are you sorry

will you drink me marrow

dry

am I rich with life, am I filling

who am I supposed to fill

will I be all the sweet my mother ever gave to me

is this all mine to keep, or
will you take from me what you took from your mother, too

190.

I stand mirror-bellied
shard-lipped

I am afraid you have my father’s hands

I am afraid of your fingernails
stand square-hipped, push

glass hips into my bones

break your hands into me

break wave fists into my lungs

tie knots in my hair, tell me it is braided

hide nettles inside, tell me they are flowers

blindfold me at dawn, keep me

sand-throated, dark-lidded

a red new moon

where do you want me, draw me

a lavender bath, draw me half-dressed

half my arm buried

dress dirt-caked, calling my mother back

saying “I’m sorry, I can’t make your birthday”

thanking you for the bath, the new dress

the only arm I have left

eclipse black now, even your hands, even your hands

against the dusk of my skin

I am afraid I will come away from you a painted sky:

bruised blue, purple, green

I am afraid you will call that love

I am afraid I will ask you to
I am afraid I have written this already

Love Letter In Summer

grow over me like velvet ferns over the hoods of abandoned cars, see
look how they are parked

stalled years ago and now swimming headlight-deep in a river of leaves

twine into me when my bones have cracked like their folded undercarriages

when my skin is all peeling paint,

turn my rust into rose petals

curl around my buckling knees, wrap them in moss and white lichens

crawl into my hitching lungs, plant seeds inside

tell me to wait until next spring

and when the oaks and the pines are standing above me, silent

listening to me cough the last of my motor oil onto the pavement

do not hang over my head

creep up under me and tickle my feet with your green fingers

kiss my belly and the crook of my elbow

whisper vines behind my ears

when I think I am all dead parts, nothing left but an empty backseat

and the decay of metal

when I beg you to abandon me

will you still see me through the forest’s eyes

will you still insist

that I can bloom again

Pulse

we have always been precious, sacred,
eggshell breastplates cradling pumping hearts
met with bullets
and our blood, our beautiful purple blood
filling Florida swamps now
staining gator teeth now

we have always been too hard for them to hold
in their calloused fingers,
we who curl together in the night
unashamed
because sometimes it is the only time we can be unashamed
we have always been too pure, too perfect

so they shatter us

but we have always held tempests in our skin, too
stretched maelstroms of monsoon tides underneath our shoulder blades
and we are ready and waiting to clap like thunder
together, together, together

and so to the Queer, the Brown, the Trans, the Other, I say,
you are perfect, we are perfect
let us blind them with our sacredness
let us burn their retinas with our silhouettes
let us rain down hell and heaven and peace and everything that we are
on this scorched earth

and to the rest of you, I say,
will you protect our precious bodies while we are alive
or is it only when we are dead that you see us

189.

put on these sunglasses with me,
each of us gets a lens, and look at the sky:
yellow streaked with gray
when the whole world is half-right at best and hazy,
mist across my windshield and swarms of birds
like flies against the bloated storm clouds
when I feel stuck like April grass on a highway median
I can see the trees through the asphalt
but I can't get my hands on them

hold your breath with me, that feeling
of a bubbly underwater exhale just before you breach the surface
only you never breach it
you stay suspended, glasslike and eternal
wondering if you'll ever get to breathe out again,
I mean really breathe out
you can see the fresh air through your swimming goggles
but you can't get your hands on it

188.

sinking past an empty 4 PM like sitting knee-deep in brackish water
pruning joints and lungs flushed with green moss, I am
stagnant and the day is hurtling toward an unforgiving sunset,
a great asking:
what have you done today
to prove you are worth something

and I surface blank-palmed

river mud mouth smeared and crying
I wish and I wish and I wish
on a starless sky
what have I done today to be not worthless

can I sweep up a pile of little reference letters and paper kisses,
huddle them around my kneeling knees
can I fan the tiny, licking flame that whispers honey words to me
like "you can" and "you must" and "you will"
will the exhale help or

am I too silt-sunk and soiled
is the concrete on my ankles hardening now, am I
too many years flung too far past fresh starts
did I throw my clean slate in the swamp
what have I even done today
what have I done