For Lucia
My body is not ready for you
I take too much wine, chain smoke cigarettes and dream up bad accidents
I could brew tea by the sun, prune the rose bushes and eat food from the garden
But I drink mouth to faucet, lie in a yard overgrown and watch the produce spoil
I could be your home, sew you into thick silk blankets and sing you asleep
But I don’t have ample breasts to feed from, a house without sharp corners or a god to protect us
Together
We will rinse the dirt from our feet and learn to be better
But my body is not ready for you
I cry every time I bleed
Every time you leave me
Due Anni
I was kept inside
Rewriting old stories
Growing vines over my windows
Tossing out my morning fruit to strangers
You fix the lock on my front door
Write me a new language
Cover my walls in watercolor faces
Work my fruit into fresh juice
I tell you about the dark spots I see
I need to show you
Where they hover over my patio
That they swim around inside me
You say you see them, too
You kiss me at my baby hairs and
Tell me our shadows shook hands,
So did we
A promise dressed by family and the forest
To hold on with every hand and mouth
To fall and fall and keep falling
To live in each other
This place is not built of goose down pillowy fluff
But a home with a diamond foundation
And the sharp corners
are smothered in a soft romance
A place where the sun licks the ground
At clean white snow, At ground covered in dirt
Where you can see the warmth
Dancing orange flecks in every room
A place safe for more of us
Texas Heat
I know that I will not feel good everyday
I will not feel well most days
The hot sun scraping my skin
Is a place
I love the most
And it is only fleeting
The sun leaves me and so do I
Replaced by night and
A victim and a villain
A destroyer she is
Reinventing herself everyday
Hoping that the new
Feels the same way
Against her skin
As the discomfort of Texas heat
All encompassing, suffocating even
Because in those moments she can
Feel still
Fill herself one single idea
And live there