Did my hands smell like ethanol
when I kissed you like a pillow
and did you know the dead girl?

Did you wash your hands or did you 
stain them clean with the hand sanitizer
your mother gave you when you left again? 
You can tell me-- 
it's hard enough to hold
a dead girl-- 
did she have brown hair?
and cinnamon raisin elbows?
and the kind of fingernails
that want to be painted?

When I return I can scrub under
your fingernails with the 
solemn honesty of a bar of green soap
that they tell you smells like Ireland.
For now just use hand sanitizer.
-- repeat-- repeat--
Get around the wrists 
like sliced plums-- like pear necks
like the plastic hand cuffs from the dollar store
we used to tie up blue dragons
in the back corner of my brother's closet--
Was he wrong to set fires?

--repeat-- until you can't
smell each other's skin anymore.
Call me ethanol. Call me isopropyl.
Use me like water and drink me
like gasoline-- stay away from
the dragons-- now we're dangerous-- 
now. We taunt the fire-- 

I know that you'll look for her 
hair on her pillow when you go back
to the room you once slept in.
The room where you learned nightmares
and drank lemon chamomile like blood
or ethanol-- 
I know that the hand sanitizer will mean
you can't smell anything about her.
That is how you wanted it.
You are safe to sleep there a night
and wear the comforter like her shoulders--
tell her she's somewhere-- tell her she's
set fires in your tongue
and that there's still cinnamon
raisin bagels in your elbows
when you roll over in another bed.

This is visiting the bed room
of the dead girl you once were.
Don't open the closet-- the dragons
still want to set fires-- wash your hands
but only when you're ready to leave. 

Kiss her in your sleep--
but only like a pillow.