i have a fear of heterosexual intimacy (i'm wrong but still).

i imagine he drills holes in you
while your eyes are closed,
your back against his bedsheets,
and with a clumsy tongue he
scoops from them the best bits of you,
drip-sweet from the
honeycomb catacombs
of your chest.

i imagine he lights matches
against your skin.
and burns your lips, in the name of a kiss, pinker
than i've ever seen them before,
a blood-rush deeper
than when we learned to laugh
even though nobody
loved us.

i imagine that he leaves bruises
with his vein-ridged hands and soft fingertips--

that he loves you clumsy like
a neglected guitar neck,

that he strikes sour notes on your flesh

and composes pages of hickeys in a key
so sad i want to smoke cigarettes and
mourn.

i imagine he swallows your words whole,
so nobody can hear the
colors in your voice
when you sing or when you
moan.
he paints his insides with
your spectrum, and when it begins to 

peel, he touches his tongue to yours and drinks.

i imagine he is hungry, hungry
and never satisfied,
biting your ears in the morning and whispering
your name, whistling your name,
until you crawl back into his den
to let him scoop, burn, bruise, and drink you
again and again

until you are just a pair of socks,
pants,
tank top,
curled up inside-out on his rug. 

relapse.

i put the trigger in your pocket when you weren't looking,
because i knew you wouldn't notice or care--

i put the trigger in your pocket,
sometimes you shift and i
go off.

i am scared of being too human for you.

i don't know how to tell you i need you to kiss me.

i accidentally mumbled i love you while we were kissing.

so my sunburned july flame faded like summer freckles;
i haven't missed it for months,
and i pity the we that was so crippled by one-sided infatuation that
i couldn't even see her very human face anymore
through my pride and metaphors.

that night in the car, 
we kissed a handful of times in the front seat,
even though you were afraid your dad
would decide to take the trash out at ten p.m.
and catch me biting your neck in the parking lot.

i may be infatuated again,

in like with the thought of falling asleep

with you tucked against my chest, but--

it's a nice thought and for now, i'll keep it.

in any case, i don't think much about dying anymore.

he puts his arm over the seat like he owns us.

he was touching my hair, and telling me about how, at parties, he and his friends try to get girls to make out. he thinks that's hot. he talked about the time two lesbians told him all about their sex life and crying while fucking. when he was talking about sex, he grabbed my hair for just a moment, and pulled- or maybe his fingers were caught in a knot. and i don't want to hate him, but i felt so gross and violated, even though i'm sure most of what he says is bullshit. i felt like he was digging his long fingers into my scalp and through my skull, prodding around in my brain and leaving filthy trails behind.

and i didn't know how to ask him to move his hand.

and the word rape passed his lips too many times.

and i hated my gendered body more than i have in a while.

maybe i'm overthinking it though, he's a friend, and he also talked about guitar and other nice things.

i was enough all along.

lately i've only got a lot of dusty drafts
and happy thoughts,
and i think i never needed you
to make me good.

why did they hurt her, she's kind.

she wrote me a letter

that made my chest-walls buckle--

so when i greeted her today,

i slid my lips beneath the bag

they'd bow-tied at her neck and

marked with "broken,"

i pressed my lips to the bone

and whispered

"they lied."

she called me pretty

and i didn't even doubt it;

she tells truths,

i know because she wrote her note in pen.