The Geography of Loving Like a Moth.

I never cut myself like a corn field.
Never in rows-- dug in the quiet vigil 
of a thin knife-- pair me down-- peeled
off the skin-- unraveling of a peach
like a plot about the person who 
thought love was a measure of 
how many pieces of themself they 
could cut off and still keep walking
by the corn fields before the sun bowed--
boil the blood for butter 
and mash through the pit like heel bones.
I have always found it too precise 
and too much like home to bleed out
all the worry I hold in my fingers--
I hurt myself with matches and with
the stumps of fingernails-- 
carve out my apologies to the Prince 
who paints the shadows beneath my ribs in
the mirror each morning-- he had never been
one man but a summary of girl-tongues
and the way boys have grabbed me
tight enough to try undress enough skin to
craft me into a woman-- I was too big for
the hourglass they built-- I learned to 
pour myself through my veins into
the trickling river lines on highways maps--
remember the scares like streets
we drive without thinking-- take the exit
that you always have even though
you know it's not the shortest way--
you want to drive through the corn fields
to remind yourself that you burn like
match sticks on forearms and split
up your apologies in the form of 
highways driven so many times
down the streets of your arms that they
are more of a home than the sheets 
you package yourself between. I have the
disease of seeing everyone as street lamps
or light bulbs for me 
to knock my head on like a front door
to the kind of love you can't
form from your own drum beat--
I want to stop slicing off my fingers
as a way of trying to make promises--
I am dizzy from trying to teach people
to love me love a drum mallet--
beat me until I'm peach butter and 
I'll still never store my hips in
an hour glass again--
We took the pit and planted it and beneath
the tree grew a tombstone to the
highways I drove with my fingers clutch
tight on the steering wheel of my forearms--
I love like a moth skull sometimes and
you need to remind me that you can't be a
butcher and a cow and a tub of peach ice cream--
I'll try to love like the butterflies
so that you might mistake me for a swallow tail
when I've only ever been a common moth
who tries to beat wings like rivers
instead of highways.