Ice cream dates with a praying mantis.

I found you like a white oak finds herself 
growing green arms again in the spring--
mistakes them from parasites and scrambles
to tear off the young appendages she sees in
the mirror-- she had forgotten that she 
would be green again because winter had been
long enough to traces thick hula hoops around
her trunk-- counting the years in rotations
of her hips and how far the snow
slide it's fingers wild in her jeans.
I fell in love with a praying 
mantis in September. I think it wasn't
his devotion but his patience. It's hard
to find people with patience anymore 
and he never asked questions and he 
didn't suggest diners so I had to choose where
we went out to eat. He was content on the
wall ofo a coffee shop or
seated on my shoulder-- making fish-tail
braids of my short hair-- I didn't tell people about
him but I didn't need too. I didn't think
that they would understand and they might
just say it was because I was the type
to shove loud boys in my throat to
fill in all the spaces I have no fat left
for-- He climbed the
same white oak outside my house until I came
home. Never kissed any leaves but my shoulders
To kiss him was like biting the top of a strawberry
dipped in brown sugar-- he baked oatmeal cookies
with me when when first close the windows at night--
when the white oak forget she had ever worn 
green arms from her hips in April--
He didn't crack the egg or lick the spoon--
but played with my hair with patient fingers--
slide pauses down my throat so hear
that all I ever wanted to do was have
someone to listen to me sing in the kitchen
baking oatmeal cookies with my cracked-egg voice
that still hesitates to sound too loud
for fear that it might pour into muffin tins.
He doesn't to if I start to trace my hips in sharpie
or blood-- another circle. I knew him green.
I knew him leaf-lanky and shuttering even
when the breeze stopped. I knew
that if I tried to sleep I wouldn't feel him
heavy on my--telling me to sing from my
hips like other boys always have wanted--
Telling me fat girls can't throw-up planets--
they only vomit their oatmeal cookies to count
less rings on their hips in the mirror each spring--
I know he would wait for me to wake up.
He tells me to wear a jacket even if it would
be warm by the time the sun got to a suitable
place on the bruise shoulders of the white oaks.
And when his skin was kettle brown he would go with me
to the ice cream parlor for dinner.
I could play checkers with myself.
He wouldn't tell me what sundaes were best suited to 
my hips-- my preying mantis didn't say much
but he would tell me to eat
like everything was a strawberry dipped in
brown sugar and like we wouldn't be tracing
our hips in sharpie and blood that night.
He told me what I already knew about kettle-brown
skin and November. He told me death preying mantis
grew small and green each spring but they 
don't trace their hips and they don't remember
who they kissed in the fall when everything
was hazy and broken and cracked egg shell on the 
sidewalk outside the ice cream parlor 
when he told me that he was dying and that 
he never said much because he wouldn't have been
able to say as much as a white oak in the course
of a year anyway-- he played with my hair
and told me that if I missed him I should
eat strawberries out of season and stop 
tracing lines on my hips and when fingers
went down my jeans that I was always green-necked
in the spring-- no boy could touch me
wild enough to stop me from throwing up
planets-- hunched like a comma in over a toilet--
no I wasn't fat I was up to my neck in snow.
He told me that I didn't need to pray.
He told me that he had prayed enough 
for the both of us. I asked if we would
play checkers again-- and he pointed out
that I could play the game well
enough by myself anyway-- that I had
baked cookies to the cracked eggs in my own
throat-- that I never needed to stuff my
throat with loud boys-- that my 
voice was strawberries, brown sugar, 
and muffin tins. Come November-- 
So I buried my preying mantis-- kettle 
brown skeleton in a white oak tree-- and boys
still mistake him for twigs
because they're too busy counting
the red-rings round my hips
like hula hoops and Spring.