You could ask about my bruises. I could say: anemia, inability to heal from trauma (un-
governable), pathological, my girlfriend beating the shit out of me or something.
The truth: when I peeled off my exoskeleton of canvas, cotton tights, faux leather, I
bloomed, a speckled expanse of clean skin. You pock me, dig in and drag, hiss and pull;
sleek creature pointing to my soft spots.
When a skinny Scorpio calls me fag, I am filled with something like pride. I crush a coffee
can and guzzle everything, round mouth a tube of garbage and nightmares about bugs
in your eyes.
If there was any doubt that I can swallow anything, I should have asked first.
I go shopping. I hate shorts. Summer is femme season because my thighs insist.
I can’t sleep at night or whenever I am trying to sleep and it’s not because of my shout-
ing neighbors or even because it’s wet-hot or even because when I close my eyes I see
the Flatiron Building toppling onto me, it’s you and your hair and your skin pooling next
to me like a shy blue desert.
I’m afraid it’s never going to stop, that I’m crunched into this dysphoric realm and ev-
erything is a beach glowing Gemini, east coast poached by tide, my long dress no longer
practical, soaked to the waist over hours of tidal creep, cotton capillaries pulling salt
closer, so much beach packed into one body, my skirt a drape of skin, loose and dirty.
Summer will incubate us—my hands capital, mouth full of fighting my teeth, doing
something new to my hair, pushing your spine into brick, twined fence embroidery,
webbing against your bones bending bad ways.
There are a few things I consider wanting.
I find myself covered in blood in the bathtub—keep your eyes open, jaw loose, resting
animal, salty and ruthless.
I can only feel, my blood filling all the pocks you leave, finger print, teeth mark, hunks
torn from my shoulders, spots purpling like a spring fawn. I never feel so empty and so
full as when you vanish wrist-deep inside me. You fall in love with a top, less implicit,
better femme.
Death is not the opposite of opening.
When I dig a shallow grave, it’s because I can’t move on.
Cauldron Anthology
47