my body is arranged marriage argument against bathroom lights
and sample cups.

they could have called me VAMPIRE GIRL
for how much blood i've drained the from myself

-- girl--
girl with blood-blushed cheeks and the fear of
sample cups at Walmart. 
with this body we were born facing 
ourselves in a mirror-- teaching ourselves
to be sample cups of tooth paste and shaving cream
we're nail-polished war paint--
painting black and white
and black and white 
and black and white
between each rib-- each vertebrae--

we learn that looking into mirrors for too long
is a kind of death we would live through again--
i wasn't scared of mirrors like 
a sex-girl
-- not like a magazine queen-- eye brow
arch to the other side of the water--
i wouldn't be dressed in mouse-click lip stick-- 
it's not so much my
face but the places i can see through it--

learn to avoid mirrors--
for the dread of what 
you'd have to correct next
highlighter in hand and
squeaky on your mirror face

become a medicine cabinet and hide beneath 
and under the cherry cough syrup you 
poured down the sink when your mother
wasn't looking-- we cough the cherry pits
and scrape off the blood with our
finger nails-- i burn
holes in the mirror with my match book
to make larger places i can
see through my skin-- this parchment--
written in highlighter ink--
-- prove myself vampuric.
it's taken till this long to argue with my skin
in the mirror--take the stand
under the interrogation of the
bathroom-- mourge-table lights--
my mirror ribs and my
finger ribs and my teeth ribs and
reflection of bathroom lights in mirror--
that false and snarled sun--
and i've spent too long waiting 
to be picked up from a sample cup
paper--paper-- hammock where i crumpled my ribs--
tooth pick snapped-- teeth picked like cherries--

do you remember how long it took
for you to look at yourself 
in the mirror without being afraid
of what you would have to go
over in red highlighter?-- blood
highlighter?-- arrangement and 
correction--and setting fire to and crumpling
like a sample cup of cheese
skewered like a sacrifice--?

well i know that i was born
with that bathroom light and i'll die
with that bathroom light
and the way it knows my skin like
the crater cheddar cheeks of the
moon-- show me where i've done wrong
and i'll war paint over it
using only my ring--
saturn ring married-- moon fingered-- 

i'm married to the me in the sample
cup-- waiting like a hammock sling
in the glare of the bathroom light--
i'm arguing that i love 
this skin-- that i'm tooth-pick solider--
solid foundation of the 
medicine cabinet-- there's no 
cherry cough syrup for this--
there's no way to avoid
the burning or the blood--

look at me myself my wife my
husband my partner in the cabinet 
i've been hiding in next to all
the coughed up cherry pits--
i'm beautiful--

i scream--