OCD & the radical act of coloring 

i woke up in this body
to find him screaming
the colors out of my room--
out of my skin--
i have been such an eradicated
girl-- a boy with clothespins
hanging him out on
the line in the backyard-- 
those there were
the shadows he peeled 
off like orange rinds-- 
tossing them down his turkey-neck
gullet 
& teaching them
not to come back--
i've spent hours on
my knees with the edge of a 
graphite pencil trying
to draw my shadows back into
place-- turned behind me
to sketch the silhouette
this body makes--
i approximate my own shape
because this body doesn't
know how to make
shadows-- it only 
scares them away or
so he tells me--
& when he came back 
the second time 
he laughed  
my night sky white-- 
punched out black holes 
where the stars would
have settled-- 
told the moon 
to turn around--
her bare back a sliver
etched like a snake tongue--
i'm shedding my skin
in an attempt to figure
out what colors we were--
i told him that i've
seen what he's done
to us-- 
i've watched him
get fat off my colors
but i still don't know
i look like-- 
& he put his lips
to my mirrors so
that i can only
use them to write my
name--
were we blue or indigo?
alone i like to believe
that on some days my body 
was the same color as a plum
& that my skin maybe have 
broken like
blueberries flushed with 
rain-- 
oh body-- did we lay 
in the arabesque of shadow?
did we fall away into the corners
of the room?
& he tells me i am a notebook
page girl-- holds me
up to peel off my fringes--
pinches my tongue between
his thumb & his index finger--
so i bite
i tell him i have a tongue
& as long as i have a tongue
i have a way to find colors
& late into the night i
get up with my black crayon
& i start shading in
the sky again
with his voice shouting shadow--
peeling back color after
color-- & i say back that
i am a body & i deserve
shadows & i can shade in every
inch of what he took--
i tell him that i am a body--
that i am a boy & i have been
a girl & i have been
a blueberry & the fat reddish
insides of a plum-- i tell him
my shadows are purple-- my stars
are cobalt &
my skin is nothing nothing
nothing but the hollow
pigment of the sun-- i'm taking
light & making shadow &
when he comes back to undress
me & flip me over
like the moon i'll tell him
that this time he pulls 
my hair i'll cut it off &
this time he kisses me 
i will only be a mirror--
my name written on the fog of
the glass--
this is what i do with crayons
& so i stay up through the night
until the sun comes up & admires
the shadows i've made--
this body is a body--
is a throat full of unscreamed  
words-- a tongue
keeping all the shadows
beneath it like a heavy 
bruised pearl--
& i know he'll be back &
we'll have to start over
but i am the kid with
the infinite box of crayons
& oh this body this 
body is mine--