The Girl You Created

you are so lovely
in your bedhead wardrobe
of indecision, fantastic creation,
i dip you into all my mornings,
contemplate poetics & truths
while sliding egg into
sizzling oil & admiring
the intricate white folds
bubbling up,
reaching.

rolling rock in the fridge; your breakfast is liquid
as you tell me you are opposed to my talent,
my ability to turn your insecurities into
grainy black and white sketches, pale hands
unshaved chin, quaint somethings to tack
on the wall & then ponder
at midnight
while you are asleep
and i am up
thinking
you are beautiful.

even when you wake, catty-corner bare
torso slumped half-on half-off mattress
while the city dozes & the hiroshima
inside your throat explodes,
wages war on the gritty white inside of the toilet bowl,
even then i am in love with
your fragility.

you are intoxicating, searching for euphoria
in the wide-eyed space where your bones have slept,
where they have tossed and turned uncomfortably
for 25 years
minus the decade
before tragedy
set in.

i tell you i believe in these things, you
because i suppose there is an inner child prowling
somewhere inside your elbow
where you placed him
the day you learned boys
don't cry.

i tell you i believe in these things, you

because there are stories
and then there are
stories

because every layer
is attached to a
synthetic lining

& i am interested in seeing you bare boned, exposed
teeth digging into flesh in front of me
where my cervix would turn
inside out for you,
where it would bleed
on command
for you, no questions ever
no questions ever
ever asked.

i am the america you believe in
the america that holds you
the quaint county line you stumble over
in your drunken curiosity
when you begin to wonder
how a woman
feels

how she moves
on the inside
while you are outside
watching

her hips
her hisory
her hands

make poems out of
soapy dishwater where
she spells your name
in the bubbles
because you are
every letter she ever
hoped for
because she is
the girl you created

the eyes you glued

the jaw you slammed your fist against
at 3:30 in the morning
after washing the vomit
from your face, out of your hair
after washing your knees
tasting indifference
& coming home.

i am erotica and nosebleeds
two lane roads & gravel
unconditional love & searching &
later,
after the rush
after the swarm,
when the bees inside my head
have stopped stirring,

you will fuck me
up, swiftly
in this and that way
interchangeable positions
paying no attention
to the disappearance
of my limbs

because girls learn
girls learn

eventually our pretty little hands
learn

just how to hold
a boy's

tears.