You taste like gin and .40s and you say you don’t hate anything

about me. We kiss. And kiss again. Kisses that eat the miles between you

and me. Hands steal under the stupid sweatshirt I wore.

My mom’s been sick for three months. Keppra to calm her brain, hold

it like the metal axis around a globe, tilting the earth. Little men

visit my mother at night. “Let us out from behind the dresser.” Let us

out. She laughed when she told me. “The room was crowded. I said,

‘You have to wait until my husband is asleep.’”

You have to wait.

I don’t know if it’s you or me biting my lip. My hands slip through your hair

like a woman kneading rosary beads. It’s a prayer about what you

don’t know and hallucinations. About hands on thighs, late night

trips to the hospital. My hip bones jut out like armed guards.

Your lips talk them down from their post. Asking. Insisting. Erasing.

There were no men. There was no music. There are no spiders. Only cracks

reaching for my hand saying that death of mind is merely new perspective.

Your hand on my chest could fracture bone and pull out the quiet

of my body until it breathed hemorrhages and squared clocks.

Forget that brittle cartilage. Get back to my jaw. I’m done with air. I’m done

with this sweatshirt. Faces press like stones making fire. Mouths

are meant for contact. Communicate. Tell me

you’re glad that I’m here. At least study the door long after 

I leave.