When I asked for it, you built a sturdy table for our kitchen,
even though it was summer and it was hot and you had to
work outside with the mosquitos. You sanded down all
the sharp edges, stained its thick legs. You tuned each
ivory tooth of that old piano we found on the side of
the road and dragged as heavy as a dead animal into
our dining room. You tightened the fan above our
bed—the one that used to wobble, seasick, like
a drunk. You unclogged the shower drain,
fished out a month of my hair. You are
always fixing things. But what is this,
my love? A crack in the ceiling.
A faulty pilot light. A keyhole in
your sternum that opens to
an ocean of doubt. I stared
into your chest last night
as if it was a telescope.
I saw our future in the
distance, an island
both of us would
rather drown
than swim to:
you cannot
fix what
wants
to be
brok
en.- Sierra DeMulder
instead, for my womb to remain
empty, to become an artifact that
scientists would study and label
and question long after my death.
Wanted them to ask why I had
chosen a lonely life instead of
years filled with kissing scrapes
and science fairs. But sometimes
your heat would take me by
surprise and there were not always
condoms in the bedside table. Or
there were, and by the time I had
unwrapped it from its little foiled
pouch, you were already inside of
me. No children, I told my friends,
my mother, the mailman, the
neighbor’s dog. But it was already
too late, and that summer I craved
odd things like hazelnuts and
pickles and spinach leaves. It was
only when we went to the doctor
and he read the results off of his
clipboard that I felt it, that space
widening, my womb growing, a
baby ripening, myself halving.
nape of the neck, the soft down of his
hair: a light dusting on his skin. The ears
lay flat against his head, not poised for a
fight, dreaming of oceans and shores
making love else-where. After, his back,
oh the spine, oh curve where I could rest
myself in, a hammock to sway us into an
easier time. How I love his back, the lot
of feathering muscle like angel wings,
strong and true and good. I fell in love
with the back of him first and only then
could I love the rest like the other side
of the moon. Farther down, past the
small of his back where I like to rest my
palm, feel him out, trace the tiny birthmark
there and move on to know the rest of
him by heart. The backs of his thighs,
feathery dark, scratchy when he lays
against me but otherwise harmless and
unoffensive as he sleeps with one arm
thrown over himself as if he’s lonely.
Farther down, the backs of his knees—
wide crevices to hide secrets and kisses
and darker, wilder things. Finally he ends
as the rest of us do—calves into heels
and then feet, so much to love, I love
you, the whole of you, the muskiness of
your skin, the curled hair on your arms.
You are an entirely different being when
you are awake. Almost alien. But here,
when we are in bed, when you sleep and I
turn toward you out of habit, out of love,
I inch closer, reach out to palm your hip
and hold it in my hand like a shell, I press
my lips to your ear and call you away and
back, back home, back to me.
when I still loved you, when I still
thought that the sun rose and set
on you, when I could still call your
body and hear it answer back like
whale-song, when your thirst for
alcohol hadn’t yet clung to you like
fever, before I woke up one morning
and no longer recognized the man
you had become, before that time
your fist branded my jaw like a three
year-old smearing paint on paper,
before I started sleeping with the
lights on, before the apologies
stopped coming, before sex was a
place I didn’t want to go—a ledge I
wanted to stay away from, you came
to me in the night, smelling like the
man I loved and feeling like him too,
all warm and earthy and firm beneath
my hands, and begged for me the
way dry ground begs for water. I
hadn’t loved you more than I did in
that moment. I would never love you
more again. Not after. Not before.
you. I slept with you, opened myself up wide,
nearly split myself in half to hold you. Because
I thought this was love, this high-fever in the
throat, pitch deep in the belly, sweat on the
temples and the creases in my neck. Never
crossed my mind that your ridiculousness
didn’t have a shelf-life, that our vows would
end up not as a contract, but as a loose set of
guidelines to follow. Because I thought this
was love, I pretended not to notice the nights
you came home smelling like other women and
smoke, let you come into our bed and rest
yourself between my thighs and take take take
until you left me spent and empty on the sheets.
Because I thought this was love, I never said
stop. I always said yes, even when it hurt. I
never learned how to say no. Even when you’d
forget my name and murmur someone else’s
into the valley between my breasts, I clutched
you tighter to me because I feared to lose you.
I feared to be without you. Because I thought
this was love, I gave you the keys to my body.
And because I thought this was love, I always
kept a spare.
more for the name
than for the color;
I buy lipstick that way, too.
In other words,
if it sounds like a poem,
I’ll take it.
and once, under the flickering light in
the dressing room at that clothing store
in the mall, your skin pressed against
my mouth to suck up all the sound. You
called it what it was, fucking, hard and
erect against my thigh, caught between
my teeth like candied floss. You whispered
it into my ear like you were placing a
personal call to the sea, your voice a lasso
to the thing that was deeply embedded
within me. You told me to say it back and
I did, I did—I said it lowly at first, unsure
and stumbling. I was clumsy with it, it was
a new sound to me, the roughness of the
c slamming me up against the door and
curling tightly in my throat, a knot. Your
leaving was just as painful, a battering from
the outside in. She asks me to say it, my
therapist, that word I will not say now, the
thing that we did to each other in the dark,
under a flickering light, the waning moon,
in places where we thought they wouldn’t
find us. It is a drowning place, that word,
where you took me and did not let me float.
A short Google poem
metacarpals, wrist, palmar
side, dorsal side. There are
27 bones within the wrist and
hand, 27 bones to grab, to
hold, to touch, to use. I swear
that I can feel every groove,
crest and whorl in the skin of
yours. I could map out your
fingerprints if I had to.
I can still remember the look on my father’s face when
I asked if I could go on the pill. He thought things like
sex and boys and god, but we can’t let her leave the house
ever and I had to smooth a lot of edges, explain it was for
everything but.
I gained nine pounds, went up a cup size, had to wear
thicker sweaters and spent the better part of the year
explaining to friends that it was almost worth it. It wasn’t
for sex, but for the lack of—a daily reminder taken at 8:01
each morning that this body has to function without an
orgasm, the lack of a shared glance between classes. It
was warfare. Battle without deaths or guns, but still a
battle. Still the taste of smoke in my mouth and rinsing
the ash out of my hair. They
left out too much in Junior Health. We had to stumble
our way through the dark to the other side, had to learn
for ourselves that it is the best of times and the worst of
times and that in the end, there is no pill that ‘does it all.’
We are kindling. Consumed by flame. Our bodies are
perpetually in the heat of summer. It is a clumsy kind of
ache, a wobbling, a shaking, an earthquake. Some of us
want to be saved while others just want.
Our hearts beep and whir. They are wanting, always. They
are fickle toddlers, unlearning, self-healing, mistaken, easily-
fooled. They are wishful. They are iron in the mouth, a key
swallowed. Kindling to a fire. You can’t bring yourself to
look away.
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
and tiled floors. Each step taken echoes,
resolves. After you remove your shirt it is
as if I’ve never seen a body naked before,
have never noticed the sinews of muscle
that make up a torso. Have never seen the
notches of bone that make up a back. I
want to say magnificent but people don’t
talk like that anymore. The word dies as a
breath on my lips. Everything is shockingly
clear, sharpened. When I look away, all I
see is static.
2. You would never look at me like this,
especially if I asked. My hips feel lighter these
days, my lips are less chapped, my shoulders
stronger. There are days when I feel beautiful
like solar flares and days where you eclipse my
heat like moons.
pinky nail and two mouthfuls of
Coke hide your crime. You don’t
think to tell your mother, who
would kill you if she found out.
You don’t even stop to wonder
about motherhood, if it’s for you.
If it’s not. All you care about is
fear and your boyfriend holding
your hand as you give the $50
bill to the pharmacist. The rest
of us wait patiently behind you,
witnesses. You take it in the car,
under the sun. Two mouthfuls of
Coke. You touch your stomach
after and swear you can feel it
working. There is a feeling of
victory, of comradery in the car
afterwards. There is laughter.
A swearing off of sex. Later, as
we stop to get lunch, you sneak
a palm onto your womb. You
whisper an apology that no one
can hear.
things like a generic username and how sick
you are of being lonely, you realize that you
have no idea what to put in your ‘About Me’
section, that talking about yourself makes
you feel tired. Stretched out. You think about
deleting your profile but you are so fucking
lonely, and all of those ads about true love
and diamonds and perfect families make you
grind your teeth together. You consider a
date with your dentist after going in for an
appointment about the tension in your jaw.
After uploading a profile picture and waiting
for someone (anyone) to message you, you
get up and let the dog out. You make tea. By
the time you come back and refresh the page,
there are several new messages. As you read
through them, you wish someone would have
told you about loneliness. How it sneaks in.
Makes middle-aged men look like fetishists,
creeps, weirdos. Makes you feel naughty for
looking. For wanting. You go to bed without
replying and the morning feels like a punch
in the gut, a hole in the ozone. You delete the
account, let the dog in. You make more tea.
Over the sound of the water coming to a boil,
you come to the conclusion that they are all
freaks. You call your dentist.
between being loved and being fucked
is I can’t remember how the first feels.
I come to bed quiet, kiss with my eyes closed,
hate how easily I touch you.
Find me the sweetest boy, with a heart
more hopeful than spun sugar on a hot day,
I will teach him the meaning of meaningless
nights. The whole time, every moment, wishing
he’d crack me open, rib by rib, to see
how I work. How I bleed.
