quédate conmigo

and isn’t that what queerness is? to think of someone else’s suffering even while you are suffering, to circumvent their pain even while you slog through yours—

the women in my family hide / escape routes in their purses / next to their car / keys sign their divorce papers / in blood / walk into rivers their pockets heavy / with shame taught me to always / check for the nearest exit and know

The times when we realized that all the songs they wrote were not for us. Were not love. Were warnings, odes to their own pain. Glorified suicide notes.

                        have you ever been

May your restlessness come at last to rest, constituents Of Midas. I wish you the opposite of what Neruda said Of lemons. May all the gold you touch burn, rot & rust.

“The body will always make more room / for grief.”

Your body is a miracle, a kind of wounded desperation, an act of feral girlhood.

Uncover me. Why should I wear modesty when the world knows of my barefaced love?

i scrub your fingerprints from my crooks. cut my hair to the scalp. set fire to the things you touched. salt my doorways so you cannot enter. fill in what you dug from me. i forget the burn of your name, walk through you in the street, and you are gauzy and thin like cotton.

Something like an absence of feeling, I never had permission to love you never had permission to love anyone you can’t love me the way I deserve to be loved never so, it makes sense

“My mother always closes her bedroom drapes tight before going to bed at night. I open mine as wide as possible. I like to see everything, I say. What’s there to see? Moon. Air. Sunrise. All that light on your face in the morning. Wakes you up. I like to wake up.”

“…dusk is falling, I love you.”