body count

i used to have a jar for boys.
the opposite of a gender is 
a mouth. what comes in must 
become a beet leaf. we get out
a slice of paper & write out
all the people we've shared
a window with. you tell me i'm
a slut which i do not think
is a title i have earned. i could have
drive farther. in the mountain once
i ghosted a boy who was really desperate.
he was begging not for me but for
a gender which is to say he was lonely
in the way that hollows you out.
i have taken a spoon to my guts 
just so i can have a gourd night.
a man is sadly sometimes
exactly what you need. 
the government has never counted
how many people it eats. maybe
the opposite of a mouth is a government.
i do not want the government's 
body count. i want there to be
no government or at least for it to 
have never killed anyone. i find numbers
where there shouldn't be. in the canal
& in the dirt behind a boarding school & 
sometimes headlights. a police car 
counts down from ten. at one either
we run or we surrender. i am sorry that
my gut impulse is surrender. 
or is it to gender or is there a difference?
i stopped counting a long time ago.
now, i count birds who i know. now,
i count pots i could fill with water
in case of a terrible storm. 
you open my mouth & crawl inside.
i will call you jonah if you agree i can
be the whale. we are hiding from the government.
my gender is still soft despite it all.
they can see us on the radar. genders,
like ghosts. thin, veil-like & then gone.