find someone to treat you like an experience

is what a poem told me & i try to listen
to poems but
i don't want to be loved like
a platter of stars or my head
cracked open like a geode on the
side of a metal bowl--
i have tried that & 
there's nothing comforting
about being made into an idol--
i want to be loved
like the slumped couch i
drop my book-bag on when
i get home-- like the little
knob that turns on my desk lamp--
the saturn rings of water
left on the end tables because
my family doesn't believe in coasters
& i wanted to loved
like the familiar wobble of
the uneven kitchen table--
i'll be the yellow-paged paperback
we use to steady the table for dinner--
i suppose there are parts
of me that could be explained
as an experience--
there was the time you 
kissed me while i dangled
upsidedown from the oak tree
or the time in the back seat of
your silver car--
we stopped in the pharmacy parking
lot where we turned off the 
radio so we could hear each
other breathe-- that's when
i told you i've been keeping 
my bones locked up in the
moon so i don't lose them again--
you were the kind of boy
who tried all the keys
while i was asleep--
a desperate & frantic clamor
to toss my skeleton & read
a fortune there in my bones--
used my femur as a trow in the dirt--
my freckle seeds born of
a dried apricot sun--
you planted them & told me
to grow into an experience
waited for a firework or a burning
bush & found nothing
of me other than a girl
who burned her hair on
the passing of comets--
my own mouth has become
a detached dream-- you fed me
the pink icing flower
from the corners of the cake
with a plastic fork & i told
you to stop but you wanted me
sweeter--
this bitter plum skin
grew around you until
you had to claw your way out--
twisted and writhing pit--
you fell out of your silver car
& loaded the rest of my skin
in the moon with my mismatched bones--
i keep the key under my tongue
but my mouth was still only an 
experience to you-- a place
from which to summon a lamp light
or a moan--
don't fall in love like
an experience--
fall in love with each other
like how you brush shoulder with
the wrong people in the
canned vegetable aisle 
that neither of you want to be in--
fall in love like the
patience of orange skin
& the smell of citrus lingering
on your fingers--
fall in love far enough to crack
your head like a geode--
they won't ask why you 
still keep your bones in the moon--
they don't want a key from
your mouth when they kiss you--
only the quiet admiration
of an uneven kitchen table
or a sofa warping into
a crescent moon--