Let me be your baby girl in a sicker, slower life,
twisted on your lap, dusk weaning the leftover sun
as I breathe the light out, leave me cool to the touch.

Desire things that hurt me, need you to take me apart,
I gather mosquitos on the ridge of my collarbones,
let them take their share of me, gifts of pearls of blood.
I feed the hungry. Like you, they only take from me.

I’m a doe in your arms, curled viperous, complaisant,
still I thorn like a rose, haloing barbs around myself 
to become something you cannot touch, yet soft enough
that I know you’ll want to. Tempt you. Evil in small ways,
I stay small enough to weaponize your instincts, you

desire to dig your fingers into me like a raw meal,
rip the tangled verses from above my diaphragm,
creep down my throat like a melody swallowed back.

I know you want to destroy me. Crush the pearlescent
wings of a dragonfly nested in your palm. I am so many things,
 more than you can comprehend, more than you can kill.

When all you want is to pin me like a butterfly, you cannot
snuff the dark falling over your shoulders, you cannot 
be a good person at the will of your needs, you cannot
hold me captive in the fist-sized cage in your ribs.

You mangle pretty things when you try to hold them.
When you wake, I hope the coo of doves haunts you,
reminds you of me asleep as the sun bleeds into life.
I hope when you see me you let the lullaby die
on your blood-tanged lips. We are estranged now,

and you didn’t believe something so beautiful could harbor 
so much malevolence. You didn’t believe in my power.
Watch me now, an angel, a lamb on stilted limbs crawling
towards the slaughter for the thrill to stain your hands red.

I look delicate still, witness the blood blooming at my throat
and it is still your fault. Watch it, like a peony unraveling petals,
pieces of me start falling, falling, falling, falling, to hell.