Set me on fire like orange creamsicles.
I was always sherbet
on sticky fingers
making sewage pools 
on hot pavement. I feed the ants
that crawl under my skin-- under 
my bed sheets-- weak waves
of centipede's uncoiling fingers.
When I'm burned thin-- tangerine skin--
scrape up my ashes that have become
blue and red and bruise pastels
rub them on the forehead of a
stranger in the sign of a cross.
Say "In the name of my mother
and her mother and saint clare
who cut her hair"
Tell them how many sunsets
they have been.
How many layers of tire rubber
they have worn down.
Tell them how they are the erosion 
that breaks rocks off mountains.
Tell them they are both fire
and palm branch soot. My grandfather
fell off a train in a flourish of steam
and died and his daughter never forgot.
I take that train to the beach each summer.
I drink nectar from plastic tubes.
I set fire to my wrists
because they look like
bug bites.
I used to light eight matches
before lighting the candles in the church
as an acolyte
just to smell fire in the threads
of a white robe
smeared with pastels.