Dusting the freckles off my shoulders
and what it's like to kiss
an alien with blue raspberry chap stick.

I was your everything
bagel-- cream cheese smile 
like a smear of lip gloss--
When we were in fifth grade
we all wore chap stick
to pretend to be the women
we would never become.
I wore high-heels like a 
neck brace or a retainer.
My retainer was blue
and I lost it on purpose 
three times until the trash
took away the clasps those
white gloves wanted to use to
make me straight
I was a blue raspberry chap stick 
if there ever was one--
and you say that meant I 
was an alien-- frozen for analysis
of the freckles on my shoulders.
Each brown specks mirrors the constellations
from the planet I was born on--
abduct me but not
like a hitchhiker-- I've
walked long enough along these corn
fields to start to make crop circles
with my bare feet.
They're in the shape of bagels--
You said you don't kiss girls
with blue lips out of principle and I said
"Well good because I'm
not a girl--"
I brushed the freckles off my 
shoulders then like sesame seeds
or remnants of someone else's stars--
"Do you believe in life
on other planets?-- look
I hold stars between my teeth 
not that they took off my retainer."
And you ask if I ever eat the blue raspberry
chap stick because it looks like candy--
you say I look like candy--
maybe my shoulders are coated in pop rocks--
moon stones dazzle me like
Orion promised me from his belt
buckle-- what were we but fifth graders?
What are we ever but fifth graders?
Everyone is naked in fifth grade.
Do you want to go back?
Tractor beam to the stream where we thought
about being women and I told
you I didn't know how to 
shave my legs so I used my Dad's 
razors--
And do you follow my crop circles--
can you read my blue lips--
I'm not cold because I'm dead--
I'm cold because I'm as 
blue as I've always wanted to be.
You can keep the freckles
from my shoulders as reminders
of the different scars 
this hot-white star has kissed me with.