I bleed for months at the temple doorways so you’ll let me in.
I am tracing the vermillion border of your lips with my finger.

We are warm dunes of Martian pink snow. I want to know,
‍what would you get on your knees for? I haven’t asked because

the answer is not me. You are trying to control time. Slow it.
Speed it. Like a nature documentary in reverse, you burgeon

then seed. Why know me, then strange me? Why not keep me
strange and never know? The sun rises the same way on days

I’ve told lies. You lean in to touch and kiss my sinister side.
Tonight, the moon is eel skin wrapped in cellophane,
or a dancing cartoon elephant whispering:

‍be warned, I have barely any tenderness left.
Tho, I’d give you what I have, if you asked for it

It was a mistake to think pain connected us.
We met in a dark cycle. Venus in Leo.

I should have known in the end all you’d want is innocence.
The girl you chose has little armor, little hurt.

I saw a snake give birth to ash when you turned away.
I was trying to teach you something. You think you know

but you do not know about me. Are you listening?
I am the widowmaker, like my father said. So soft and

open, bugs go in and out like I’m a spirit, and I am.
But I am also bleeding into the new year. In the end

I am so porous anything that wants to get in
will make a home. Grief, pain, the worm of nothingness

boring more nothing inside of my softness. You’ll want me
when I’m so open anyone can have me.

I’ll be royalty by then. A reflection
of the people who love me, the people who loathe me.
This grief of beetles a crown I wear.
This sad of crabs, my jewels.

Their hunger for me invented me. Married couples message me after I become single, and start by saying they’ve always found me attractive. Like they discovered me, like I had never been.

                    All their FANTAZIES:
                    school gurl < < pony gurl < < Princess Leia Rapunzel braid bikini < <
                    alligator queen of the Nile < < doming while eating a sub-human
                    sandwich < < Eiffel-L’arc-De- Triomphe-Humpback-of-Notre -do-me < <
                    star-spangled naughty banner < < X-Files with ears and a tail < <
                    coughing Victorian lace while cuffed < < Kitty Jackie-O < <

                    FANTASAYY:
                    bisexual woman as conduit between two people < <  glass skyway
                    connecting riverbanks < <  dirt passage between two castle chambers < <
                    vital stem connects flower and bulb < <  pillar that holds up
                    the house where life takes place < < silent egg in the batter that sponges
                    the cake < <

Curiouser & Curiouser! These couples ask for holes where there are none! Me, a brunette gravitational pit. Spelunk my bitchy chasms. Prospect for pockets. Hunt for keyholes. Open. Open. Wider. Wider. Big enough so their relationship can fit inside me. Galaxy gaze. Wonderlanding. Drink me. Eat me. Paint my roses red. What they really ask for is my early death through opening new holes. Off with my head.

                    I have a FANTA-Z:
                    Someone asks how I feel at the end of a long day < <
                    A beloved reaches underneath a mess sheets to seek my hands, my face, in
                    the dark < <

Just now, a voice said, oversharing is giving away energy and keeping secrets is protecting it.

But I am not using protection in this poem.

If I open any wider, make any more holes, I will fall into myself and never climb out.

‍

‍

Note: This poem previously appeared in Gulf Coast.