summer for feeling the world breathe on you.summer for feeling abandoned.
for hugging at midnight with open eyes              wondering
if cruelty can spread through skin.for shedding more manmade skin each day
until I’m left with the songs God left me for a body

                                      — still, sometimes wondering if I should’ve kept
                                           the butcher                                       just because
                                           she was the only one who knew how to dance
                                           with me and

                                            wanted                        to do it.

after I left she went to every party cross eyed
so she could see herself in the mirror                twice.kissing my own tears
on her flank.dying in
my own childbirth?honestly, I woke up with colostrum
filling my bloodstream.all i remember
is the first breath of unbloodied light, before I started
to cry.my dreams now
aren’t from the past or the future, they’re from my animal brain.my hot
nights of melatonin tolerance and all fours
                   
                               —  see               how it became
about me,                   not her?that is how my life turned.its jaw
in a bruised hand, initiating
day/night mazurka.