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