Sharing thumb print cookies:
A quiet elegy for my Clone

I didn't mean for you to happen-- 
It was all a mistake to 
feel enough self-love to
think flesh more than a mirror--
To clone myself under blankets 
at midnight when all the regrettable 
things grow legs and walk
about my bed room as shadows 
and the sprites of car headlights--
I met myself, you, in a dream
or a nightmare--
we held hands and walked
along a street in New York
--felt like the subjects of 
a romantic comedy-- 
A camera crew followed us
and the bill boards lit  
our pale skin like a stained glass
window made of m&ms--
shared foil bound chocolates from a bench
in central park-- pretended 
to be wilderness explorers
in Alaska-- I said I'd build
a cabin for us and you surprised
me when you kissed me so much
like I had always wanted--
it tasted like a handful of 
jellybeans or biting the icing rose
off the corner of a birthday cake--
you were me but with a different birthday
born in my green bed sheets 
from a dream-terror where
I loved me enough to make an us--
I laughed at your lavender hair when 
I woke up to find you here
in this bed where I fall asleep 
alone-together with a court of nightlights--
you told me my hair was lavender too
and we took some time discovering
so many intricacies God had endeavored
upon to make my lips and my eye brows--
Our lips and our eye brows 
You lips and your eye brows--
You said we should make pancakes
and I reminded you we don't ate
pancakes anymore-- and you held 
me like a cupcake wrapper--
while I cried about skillets
and all the bowls of batter
unused in the fridge-- you reminded me about
the chocolate and the nightmare-dream
and I told you that I only
ate in my sleep-- but oh you still
kissed me like confectioner's sugar--
So we dressed in front of each
other instead of a mirror-- got tangled
in shoe laces and buckled 
in our belt loops-- Oh! What it is
to have known myself in you--
only you didn't
wear cuts like wrist watches 
or m&m scattered match-stick burns on your
forearms-- when you asked what they were
I told you they were only scars
and you said there's no such thing
as ONLY scars--
You had my soft skin without
gashes-- without the reminder-wounds
cut from art class collages 
senior year-- without
the prune-lined bunches at my hips from where
all my pancake skin left me before
I could dip it in syrup--
We baked thumb print cookies because
I always bake thumb print cookies
with my lovers--
you laughed and didn't believe that
I loved you-- didn't because that
I loved me and us and this
body we shared scars between--
you asked if I could cut you so that
we could be the same-- so that
you could know what had made me
so different in the same skin--
instead we pressured our
shared thumb prints and filled
each with raspberry jam-- 
with blood-- with scabs--
with wounds sealed shut by the time
of an oven-- our thumb prints on
each other are bloody and so much
like the m&ms in the stained glass
window at church-- we knew this
was a love that was forbidden
we knew this love would leave
us empty cupcake wrappers--
we bloomed in icing roses and
you told me to remember you in
every thumb print we made to
fill with blood and jam-- 
but I couldn't remember which were
yours and which were mine--
I said
Kiss me this one last time--
I want to eat chocolates on a park 
bench and build us so many cabins for
me and us and you--
You said you could have loved me
if maybe our skin was more similar--
not so much separation of scars--
I tried to peel them off to share
but you were already crawling into 
The oven-- head first carefully over the
trays of our bubbling thumb prints--
You told me--
I kiss you in the mirror 
I kiss you in your wool socks
I kiss you in blue icing roses and
all the fear you remember in a pancake
I kiss you in lavender hair--
turning blue and painted in m&ms--
And you were assumed back under
a street lamp in a dream-terror
back where I would meet you again
only not to kiss-- just to measure
thumbprints and hold each other
like cupcake skirts--