princess trials, canned peas under the mattress
and the irrevocable fate of the potted plants in the window

i know you're the one who was never satisfied with the result--
convinced that my sleepless nights are a self-inflicted
performance art piece-- the sleeping beauty statue who 
spends each hour long and hard rummaging for a thought
beneath their eyelids-- 
this is where we found our
names scarred above the tailbone of the elm tree-- this
is where i removed the dead leaves from your hair--
whispered to you that if you love me you have to accept
two things: 
1-- i'm incapable of sustaining life from a ceramic pot
on a windowsill-- 
2-- i'm on trial as a princess-- No-- not a princess who
eats strawberry shortcakes and crosses her legs beneath
another sea of ruffles-- another lake lapping with eyelids--
no i'm the princess who kisses like the rim of a tea cup--
i'm the princess who sleep like another steady suicide
of the moon-- another ray of light beneath a door frame--
my eyelids have clasps like a change purse
1-- some people buy children to fall in love again-- we bought
a potted violet-- a stout cactus and a woven tree to stand
in sequence on my windowsill--
2-- one pea wasn't enough for you to test me-- you wanted
to see how clattering this girl-body could sleep-- you took
the rations from the bomb shelter-- the cans you shook
like wet maracas and said:
     now we can know for sure-- for sure your the princess 
     your name promised me last night when you were saying
     a elegy for the moon
1--i warned you i kill potted plants out of mercy-- who
want to live with their legs coiled under bed sheets--
trying to grow into a can of peas--
2-- my body reject my skin sometimes and i watch myself sleeping
next to you-- and you don't feel the cans of peas under the
mattress-- 
2-- did i tell you how hard it is to climb back into a body?
2-- i open the cans while you sleep still as a 
the rock body of the moon-- dip silver spoon and cold peas
at four in the morning when the sun considered feeding the windowsill
1-- i threw their bodies in the yard while you were away-- i warned
you that the death of a potted plant at my hands is irrevocable--
2-- princesses are good a burials
1-- weave goodnight in dead branches
2-- test me test me my sleep warden-- i'm ready to prove 
i can feel anything beneath a mattress
2-- why don't we try it the other way around this time? make
a body of peas and i'll sleep under the beds and you
tell me if you can feel me-- feel me leave my body again
2-- this is a performance art piece-- this is what we made of
the bomb shelter-- 
2- if i don't wake up when you call me peel back the mattresses 
like the lids of a can and spoon me out in cold beads 
on the blankets-- an interrogation for the passive death
of the stout cactus you thought we could grow into a crown
of thorn--