I was damned with flesh that can be fucked 
and innocence that is a fleck of light on a pool 
I cup the water in my hands and wet my body 
but I am still this burgeoning thing 
I sweat on the hot summer pavement 
trying to shed pounds of my ass and hips 
I want to fit in that speck of light 
Have a name people say lightly  
at the very top of their throat   
I am sweet, 
like small grains of sugar on a table 
touched by hardened fingertips 
I want a soft body that shows indents 
proves I wasn’t making this shit up  
I was a girl once
No one acted like it, but I was 
I was small and I needed to be treated as such 
Not like a secret agent of epic desire 
I was not “bad news” 
I was playing in the grass 
Give me my small back 
Hand back to me my young body 
I can treat it better 

I stopped eating meat because the hippie on instagram 
Said the animals are scared when they die 
So when you eat them you eat their scared feelings 
Now they’re inside you 

A year with no meat so now I know 
All the sadness I have is my very own 
The blood coursing within me 
Is mine, all mine 

In order to avoid the ghosts waiting in my sleep 
I stayed up all night watching a show 
On the failed love lives of new york 20-somethings
As the main character took her tits out 
I burned my eyes onto the screen 

In my dreams, I’m your warm weather 
I’m the coastal highways you were hoping to find 
when running from your grey hometown 
In my mind, I’m your holy path 
I’m the blessed water your grandmother 
put on your infant forehead 

I think I’m safe at work, under dimmed retail lighting,
in a cloud of perfumes that smell like first dates   
But a silence has found me here 
In that quiet, 
in that violence
I remember your face 

You had saved me from my mundanity 
I’d never fallen asleep to that raunchy show on hbo 
I had school assignments and meals to prep 

But then I found a love that is still waters 
Love that's like an impressionist painting of a meadow on a hill
We’re thick blobs 
under a gradient sun 
Our sweet nothings flattened to the canvas  
Blended into gentle winds 

This is the dream I drown out 

In my iPad light 
I journal about you fucking me 
On a school night 
I stumbled on top of you 
Steadied myself on your shoulders 
you called my confusion adorable 

I didn’t know what to do with my hands 
but my heart was decided  
I didn’t know how to fuck 
but I was enrolled in the course 
I slipped out of the only pink thong I own 
more was already on the way 

I was losing all my innocence 
while my parents were down the hall 
and to my soul's delight! 
No more thoughts about sandwich calories 
And my gas tank I must fill  

But now I’m back in my room 
Bed unmade with the lights off 
Tracing the image of us 
on the street corner

I know you don’t believe in god 
but I hope the memory of me convinces you 
I hope you remember me 
standing in your jacket 
Looking at you all enamored 
I hope that in that moment you ache for me so badly 
You pray for our paths to cross again 

I am speaking with a 
softness that my mother
used to ask of me 

one that i never gave her 
not after learning that
there are no blizzards in the motherland 
only silent wind 
only pacing along the equator 

I was always told my problem what that 
I keep talking 
even when my words 
have already been understood as useless 

I used to tell god 
if he really loved me 
he’d let me start over 

Words delivered quietly was the answer 
but I didn’t hear over my screaming 
over my wailing 

My mothers English was as good as my sanity 
In tact, but performative 

I thought my voice could move mountains 
like the ones my sister went to school under 
I needed to know my body could do something 
useful, unlike the words I inherited 

I wish I was beautiful
It’s become a sort of melody 
The current taking me to the next life 
I wish I was beautiful 
The same way I wish I was filled 
With blood and not nails 
I wish I grew from the earth
If fruit recognized my touch 
Than maybe I’d sleep soundly  
If I wasn’t mold 
Smudged out and warned against 
Then maybe I might start seeing the point of this all 

But what do you do with anger if not lick it clean? 

How are summers meant to be spent  
If not making heat? 
In bellies 
And at the ends of sticks 

Soup for fairies 
Left at the base of tree trunks 

Summers are for consumption 
For feelings that flame for all that is lost 
For crimes that are too late to vindicate 

It is the time to succumb to all that is devastating 
While living in a scene too beautiful to miss 

Circling the understanding 

That what once belonged to god,

Now belongs to you 

You etched your name into all my exhales 

I took labored breaths 

while you peeled the tiny hearts off my skirt  

In your hands, all of my sweetness   

I try to trace how we got here 

Only the middle is clear: 

Muscle and smoke

Soft stares in the dark 

I watched the water pull back 

What once belonged to god, 

Now belongs to you

I pray at the feet of a flesh-made man

Before I was blasphemous 

I was beautiful 

But I had gotten tired of stone

I wanted a body

Where two or more are gathered 

There I find you over and over 

Learning the anatomy of a lie:

Firm bodies and naivete   

I swam alone, recollecting 

What is gods, what is yours 

My palms slashed and open 

Awaiting purification