guitar strings across a doorway

make me your instrument of sinew
& wood. i want to be where
your callouses come from. i used to play 
an out-of-tune guitar 
for an audience of teeth & boyfriends.
often i will walk through a door
& hear everything plucked.
i could never hold the pick just right
so instead i moved my fingers 
like little rats. every room is
the string belly of another time.
fill my hull with coins & tightening. 
what i crave is for the melody to fall down
& all of us to let out in the snap 
this is what we're waiting for. have you ever broken 
a guitar for an audience? which is 
to ask, have you ever had a room watch
while you turned yourself
into performance? there are doctors 
who have sugary drops of my life
beneath their tongues. boys 
who carried me like a bowl of oranges
to the river where everything
is made of strings. i tell the guitar
i am ready to be a house. to twist
the pegs & listen until we are all tuned
& ready. no one is ever ready though.
i ask the spiders to play me
a song about dead boys. ask the birds 
to gather plastic shopping bags 
& fill them with fingers that have
escaped from me over the years.
i try to remember how to hold your neck
& you try to remember how to grasp mine
so that i don't choke on the abalone.