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.

(milk on your lips, i am waiting)

an acquired feel, winter has;
and sixteen 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, solid part, 
don’t let me be again but a small, sleeping tree.