The chocolate box dissection
of my body
and fathers who still
collect stamps.

You don't like it when you
bite me nougat or Belgium cream--
you're a boy who wants all
his girls praline-- read the bottom
of my body of chocolates 
and taste me full of holes--
This confection dissection I've been
built for-- I was born for--
they arranged every part of a girl-body
in a box for you to choose from--
leave the white chocolate squares
of these bird cheek bones-- barren 
and pluck my chocolate raisins
one by one by one 
out of the limp vine of this spine
until we both break like cordial cherries.
This is sex now. This is blood.
This is what love is like for boys
who learned from their fathers stamp collections.
Blood-- like this raspberry mousse--
No you never could stop yourself--
you were trained that these squares 
were cut for your conquest-- for your
unsent postage-- a binder sideways
half-eaten apologies.
Please  
Leave me naked.
Leave me virgin rum. Leave me kneeling in 
the frame of another postage stamp--
Who taught you how to read girls backs?--
point out the pieces that you
want-- love us à la carte and lick 
the glue off our backs like your fathers
did with their stamp collections--  
hold us here under box lids--
in these ruffles-- under these ruffles--
eating these ruffles
your pantie packages-- with all the 
gold hems-- and when you kiss me
like caramel I could have almost
believed you weren't just another
stamp collector-- another boy
who lined every's body up in boxes--
in lines-- in chocolate raisin 
vines-- I am another still shot
in the book of your father's
stamps--
paste me between the biplanes
between the Pekineses 
between the ladies who tilt
sunhats towards Model Ts--
take me take me
and don't depart me eaten
in halves of butterscotch
you didn't feel like finishing--
Was I too thick for you?
Too sugar? Too glue? Too 
much like the address of your 
father's biplanes--
Ganache and jaw bone-- 
You didn't think that I had a chest
full of marshmallow
these fists of pecan
and these elbows 
cracking with cashews--
paste me and post-mark me in the 
pages among all the stamps 
you've neglected to mail
your teeth back with--
Did you think I would
wait for you under a lid just
for you to decide what parts
of me were worth all these wrappers?
I'm opening up
your father's stamp collection
and mailing you back each kiss
I ate from you-- and I won't
try to tell you that you were
an envelope for me-- 
I never left a square of your
body uneaten-- I never saw
a boy as a chocolate box or
frilled frame of a postage--
I saw you like a raisin vine-- 
like your father and your father's father
and like scientists who say
they have to cut things apart
to figure out how they work--
then tell me how I loved
you and left nothing uneaten?
Tell me how I kissed you cordial 
and cherries.
Tell me this is sex-- this is squares
this is your father turning 
the pages of our elbows 
this marshmallow 
this is praline--
This is me telling you 
I ate the unfinished chocolates
you thought you could taste half of
and close the lid.
This is me unraveling the stamp
collection of your father to 
send you my wrappers.
This is postmarked.
This is where we live now.
In ruffles. In squares.
In my our bodies of chocolates
and stamps
and closed the lid.