Here I am, I said. I wanted victory and
received Victory! I needed your
jaws more than crushing defeat. Taste me. 

You know how your red toes touch the sky
and I can hardly think of anything else
when I see blood in the sun, painting 
clouds rusty and wretched for me. You 
know I’d rather be empty than lonely, 
and I need to promise you
a thousand times —I promise you with 
million words in your native tongue that 
that is not the reason I swallow you whole.

The sky lies too much for you to 
believe it. Is that why you love it? (do you love me?) 
What can I dress it with 
that will make that question less earthly. I
am hungry for sea and stars and 
you guiding me home. You are
still sick off the pits in my stomach that
neither of us can stop devouring. How could we?
They taste like sweet peaches
and the first morning after we met. 9:55 What time is it
over there? 
10:00 Oh. I’m going to spam your inbox like a weirdo. 
10:01 I hope you don’t mind. 
10:01 I love the thought of
sleeping in your arms. 
10:02 I’m sorry. 

(you were 
all I ever needed and you
were never enough.)

(I was 
worse than being empty but
better than being lonely, 
sometimes.)

I am more lonely
than fragile.

—You’re the bull on fire, 
I’m covered in 
oil’s blood, and we
are more lucky
than each other, 
and I 
despise you more than
you like
the sight of your
perfectly cold china chattering. 

If every rocky boat
had rattled each of my 
heavy cages
the way you did, 

I would be 
living off lonely reeds, 
and you would never
have noticed
ripples outside hollow stems

where water
rummaged though my bars.

Wind the
seas sold to my eyes, 
for my lively life ashore

wound its way
up to my 
succulent spirit. 

I have better odds
to beat to death
for want of restless, 
endless living. 

I wanted the
rain to know, 
while I spilled tears like drops.
I know it, I know it
in my eyes that 
see no bottle’s depths
no hope of
lands to let plummet. 

Did you want me
to be faithful?

I want you to 
like the way I talk
to you, like you’re 
the subject of my
poetry, my
casual adoration, 
the words I drink
to fall asleep.

A woman named after a dragon
wore her hard eyes to someone’s funeral,
but only after the wild-haired maid
with brand new flat shoes has signed every slice
of every delicate stack of X-marked lines
looming over pungent promises 
only her wingspan could keep. A thief’s tears
are worth something, you know. 
But so was fire. 

She didn’t go to 
many wakes, and
soon enough she changed her name
to a red streak that could be discovered
by someone who dared
root through the ashes of Vesuvius,
freshly spun boxes of
the whistling sea’s donations. 

The handmaiden would
find shoes eventually after heartstrings stole her kingdom. 
Any girl can take another name; it 
takes a woman to keep it. Stars have codes 
to blow out the watchful eye. But the 
roaring beast who ate the moon’s mistress…
she can look all she wants
at a fortress. Nothing will 
keep you safe, she said to souls and soles alike. Not the 
mood swings of the sky, not even I. 
My tears I let blanket your eyes, 
not even I can blind you. 

But I can make you dance off
your bones in lava, splay
heat merrily, ecstatically, and
you may want to be alive

but your deep dragon wishes that
with your dry diamonds
you’d have never seen light. 

If you love me—
don’t think, 
don’t even think
how light I could be
with softer scar tissue. 

I told her the
endless secrets of my bad morning, 
(& my night tied-up
with cotton rope that handheld mirrors
cannot burn away)

she had bleached hair
and she was nothing

I could blow I 
kiss to a black hole
that made hair
out of thread, 
but I couldn’t give her
anything more than eternity. 

the sheets wait while I slumber. I know
there is nothing writhing from my
marrow to muscle tissue. I know I 
can float away on her gesture 
because there’s nothing sweet in sadness. 
It will not weigh me down when the 
North wind comes calling, 

& I can howl inside her
bones to long
for her to notice her liquids missing, 
and her calcium, and her
true-blue iron jutting though me like a desperate tent-pole. 

I will hide in 
the places her blood keeps safe. 
Welcome me, her
master starts calling over the top of her
oxbow cello
while they

wait to play me like the fiddle I am. 
Don’t you 
hate how delirious
a breakdown can be? 
I do when I shatter.

Won’t you hate 
with the two of us? I whispered 
again, 
to her father this time. 
While he 
bought the bell jar out from 
underneath my oven lips, 
and let his
daughter’s sheepish anklets
disappear off of my tuneless skin
while she wanders,
wonders
where a lost girl might have been. 

“but maybe I’ll never work again.”

yes, maybe. She might
call upon an agency with
no ties to a single swollen heart, 
and she might
ring me up on a Saturday, 

when closers lie with
open arms, returning hope’s
oblivion, free

as carotid birds
stripping bare the Sabbath, 

maybe. 

I need you
only to steal me
from all my enemies

and to resurrect
all my friends

from my
jaws of victory, my
dagger-addled 
missionary,
sniper-studded lens, 

and I need life only
to hide easily
secrets concealed within
pale misery. 

and I need myself 
simply to
wake in defeats, 
to suck your veins dry
and devour heartbeats.