that color is not color. The red flower, / she tells me, absorbs all light / but red, so reflects red / where she and I can see it.
Sometimes it’s seaweed in your throat you can’t cough out / or an ink cloud expanding in your skull
What’s the thin break / inescapable, a sudden thud / on the porch, a phone / vibrating with panic on the nightstand?
Out here, I’m lonely enough to open / my body for anyone that finds me
You can’t control what people make of you. / Some see sacrifice / where others see torture
Some mornings, I come to on the floor, / my neck burned with moon tracks
Like an ermine looping through the snow, mouth a pink line, / I’m suited for my habitat.
Here’s a lesson: If you leave a hole in the forest, / leave a mouth open in pain, astonishment or grief, / something will come to fill it
Admit it. This is how you want me, slick where desired, / rough where requested.
