i am one and you are all of them

on days like these, we hold tea between our teeth.
ask to be calmed by some warm, hopeless skin

like a thin line of chai against porcelain.
sad kids don’t live the way we used to.

we take long showers because warmth holds us softly,
twirl licorice with our tongues as if to tie a knot with an aftertaste.

an acquired feel, winter has;
and fifteen years of ice i've swallowed.

sometimes, i want you to spell out a syllable in my voice.
words seem so much kinder when they drip from your tongue.

if i could have even a bowl of your mistakes, i’d place them on the kitchen counter beside a warm plate of figs,
how much i would like to trade errors because yours, at least, make a nice centerpiece.


before we drift, (like thick fish bones in a tall glass of water)

close the door and tell me how you spoke when you were brittle.

how you learned to swim, which breaths you choose from a line of wind.

clean out your licorice drawer and fill it with rice, try to find me in the grains.

who? i am one and you are all of them.

with strawberry eyes on mine, i am sold by stomach linings.
keep me safe, my love.
don’t let me be again but a small, sleeping tree.