Nobody pays the muscles in your face, no
they work with you
gentle fingers lifting cheek as a place,
pinching beams of lip

Tonight, though, their puppet hands shake 
strings on a pill’s energy
and my lips purse too erratically—
am I kissing air? 
Are we, my lips and me,
trying to vacuum seal breath?

Oh, Little hands, quivering on mouthpiece,
please can you shrink wrap segments
of this air I’m breathing
in suffocating bags,
could I clearly plastic-wrap 
this proof of respiration?
Can we keep the bags with the sweaters
in our winter closet
by our slab-stacked comforters,
by our snowy, hushed scarves?

I’ll need them when winter lashes out
and my Little Hands get tired—
leaving my face unemployed
by emotion, on strike—
I’ll pop those bagged breaths
like a bag of stale chips
I’ll sit on the couch
in matching pajamas
I’ll watch those archived breaths in the air
diffusing in steam across new coffee

I’ll even pay the muscles of my face
to cooperate
I’ll buy a smile bigger than my jaw

Oh, to keep something that breath 
I’d let Little Hands crack my face with happiness
Oh, to keep something useful
from when my face hung lifeless, my words
as flat as a gasping blood cell—

Oh, to keep a breath, an oxygenated moment
in a bag
like taking home a goldfish
that might be real gold—

Oh, to keep what I produced
when I could hardly make a memory— 
to keep something—
that somehow helped me in the guts
that fed my blood when I was hungry—
something
that felt me from the inside
that felt me from the other side
the way you did 

Accidental light brightly caught that colon of metal
meddling with the sternum of that girl
in a full concert, where I saw everyone dancing
and she was dancing, turning her feet up
with the music and a little flashing light
crowding her inserted jewelry, tight
to those two flat silver circles, coin-sized—
anchored dermals in her skin,
exactly where you have them

And it pierced me to almost see you,
but not with the same venom
your pet snakes’ fangs would mix with me
I remember those two long reptiles  
dreaming every night from their glass aquarium
and the sandy, soft hissing noises
as their scales smoothed each other,
their bodies twisting in and out of tandem knots
like a rope
like something
that would have tied us together

But you didn’t bring your snakes with you
when you came to see this city
and I didn’t ask you to,
before or after you kissed me

When our sex left us, we molted
without the complications of real pain—
few fevered text messages exchanged,
the scarf of yours I accidentally kept 
(it’s in the closet, pattern unchanged)—

It was summer and the sun sank low
looking over the edge of your bedroom window,
that glass saw
into your parent’s cornered place,
saw our bodies, all wound like river-bends,
laying like rocks in our river bed,
baptized by the flow of our rain and grace
Oh, later it was damp for months
in the back room of my brain—

Until silver rain fell down through a Cincinnati ballroom,
those piercings on another girl, dancing
in the dry breath of ice,
her two spots of rain anchored twice,
contending between her heart, on the left,
and the body’s place with no heart, kept 
to the chest’s empty right—
the place where someone’s wrongly mirrored ear
would wait patiently for a pulse
in the slithering night

And while listening to snakes
that attentive mirror image might,
just might,
put her hand to her own center,
not the left or the right,
and find something like a signature of fangs
in silver dots
where you wrote your name

I’ve gotten good at putting on condoms and staying out of jail
(better than your other daughters,
better than you)

But this week I emailed the people who tell me I’m smart
to tell them
I’m not as smart
as they think I am
(Still, I’ll fly to Rome out of their pockets
since they’ll let me
and avoid posting pictures of my bong
on the internet
since they’ll kick me out—
I still care what they think)

Dear Mom,
I’ve gotten better at grocery shopping and reading the nutritional labels
standing like a flamingo in the aisle,
examining fish in water,
in oil 

But this week I had to be honest
about how hungry I was
and I ate an entire pot of soup
the same way you once ate a sink full of beans—
You vomited
I didn’t

Dear Mom,
Since I’ve done it twice in the last hour
I’ve gotten good at falling in love by now
(better than your other daughters,
better than you)

But this week I messaged my boyfriend on facebook
to tell him
that all the abuse means I’m not sure I exist

Still, I think he loves me
(more than your other daughters,
more than you)
or whatever is left of me
after I got so small 
trying to fold under your arm

Dear Mom,
By now you should know, 
or rather, you should not know at all,
how good I am at keeping secrets
(like your other daughters,
like you)

But this week I’ve been reading about infants and hunger
and I wonder
and I hunger, too
for your tomato-seed secrets 
since you never told me
and I never saw you cry

Except for that one time in Wendy’s
when we meant to go for coffee—

when you mentioned your brother—

when all I had was a diet coke—
and your tears fell on my lemon slice
which was already squeezed up,
all the acid
already cried 

Your red dress wraps around my throat
while I hold my anger like an infant
kicking

Whatever your Creole lifestyle was
I remember
and you dressed so well
I could not forget
with my anger in the other room
wailing about you
without a monitor

Now you’ll be a doctor with some bloody hands
and a bloody dress
underneath yourself
sopping up my spilled jealousy, so sorry

Maybe
you’ll deliver this anger from me
Put it in the NICU
so that it doesn’t nick you
like it’s shredded me before

We will both sleep on couches
crowded by dark cats who love us
sleeping our way through Welbutrin
not speaking
just wailing or kicking
held
like an infant
like an anger
like a grudge 

You could loosen yourself
from my neck
but your red dress stays
zipper to my jawline
fabric always concealing  

Lunch is an argument, a question
of fairness, plated with grilled cheese
and a persimmon.

The ground outside is cold, green
and white like creamed spinach.
On the hospital’s busy days
my parents
used to go to Boston Market for the spinach.
This was before my sister
moved to Florida 
and my other sister got taller than me,
before I ate my words
for lunch
after talking to you.

It was never supposed to be fair
except for our summer church carnivals.
It hasn’t ever been fair
unless you mean
the weather.

This is the first red flesh. 

You are missing it
Too

Halves of a walnut shell
Split, splayed
Two cupped hands
Waiting for rain

Full of the absence
Of the other

We are
Two shells clasped
Around an unformed pearl

There is sand
On my tongue, there is grit
Between our clammy selves

There is fertile hope
For something to grow on
Waiting for rain
Burying nuts

There are hungry squirrels
There is snow, more snow

There is something missing
From me
From you

Like spring is missing from
Winter
Is waiting for
Spring