We went to see a movie only to discover
it was about us.

We had not seen a movie
for so long that we had forgotten where
to sit to see the screen. 
The theater was dark and we
followed the lights on the
floor like meandering airplanes
on a runway waiting to escape
to motel vacations in towns
without ice cream parlours.
We found the front row
appealing because it
was the only one where we would
not have to split up or sit next
to strangers and we couldn't see
any of there eyes so we 
didn't trust them. They were too quiet
to be real and they were
the kind of people who ate
one chocolate covered raisin at
a time like rations-- like
war time-- like survivors of air 
raids who packaged themselves
in plastic as spiral mints or promises or fear.
We could feel their eyes
and we had come in late
so the previews had already started.
We were startled to see that we
had already seen the movies that
the previews were for-- one was
about that Christmas when I got a
tea set and cried in the attic
about all the things that don't
fit under trees like hip bones
and sunflowers.
The next was about the boy
I had pretended to have forgotten--
like a ghost lilting on
the shoulder of a pier and I didn't know
if it was a horror film or a romance
or if those are the same thing--
they usually are for me--
I don't sleep after but I miss
those jump scares-- those dark corridors.
The blood, the violins, and the bracelets
still on my dresser.  
Only when the movie started did we begin
to eat the popcorn. We discovered it was stale
and tasted vaguely like packing peanuts--
we made ourselves into care packages
to ship to our future mail boxes
outside of apartments we would rent in cities
and sometimes still feel like
tourists. Buy souvenirs on the way
home from work and sit them on the 
end table as if we had traveled. 
And yes the movie was about us.
After the previews we had only
anticipated the worst. We hoped at least
the other movie goers didn't notice
but the leaned forward in the rows
behind us. We wanted to leave
because they knew how we looked
at ourselves in bathroom mirrors
and how many times we had
eaten while crying and we felt
guilty. We wondered why it had to 
be us up there and why there
wasn't someone else to watch. 
We left before the credits
were over and ate the chocolate
covered raisins and skittles
by the hand full from the curb in 
the parking lot.
You said you wanted to see the movie
that was either a romance or a horror film
and I said it would come around
again. That we could get tickets.  

So, against our better judgement 
we made  bond fire in the living room.

I know it's July but
something felt too cold
and I got desperate. It was
the air conditioner I know--
that metallic breeze that made my throat feel
like stale scrambled eggs
and my knuckles crinkle again like
February-- and I hate February.
I want to be covered in the thing
residue of a Pennsylvania summer that
wraps your wrists in that clear
tape film-- that humidity--
that dizzy spiraling euphoric
heat-- the kind that makes
you want to kiss trees. I've
kissed trees in the heat and
walked on the double yellow
lines to the reality that radiates
from the wobble-lines 
on an asphalt horizon-- I want
to day dream-- heat dream
and so the storm was cruel to us.
We looked out the windows 
and felt cold-- unnaturally cold.
I made the first move and took
the empty pictures frames and broke
them for kindling-- struck the 
matches I was saving for
candles and for praying to 
pictures of Mary on my desk--
I said that we had to decide then 
and there if we were going to do it--
if we needed the heat that badly
and no one objected-- maybe they
were scared of me-- scared of what
the cold does to me-- makes me 
desperate as a copperhead-- as a corn snake
waiting for their blood to freeze solid
like a blue raspberry Popsicle--
And I wanted to makes it before
the thunder turned out
the lights and made us feel guilty
for stealing fire from the Gods in
the first place. We took
only the useless things. We saved
the books even though we all wanted
to see their pages raptured by fire--
we burned coupons and shoe laces
and laptops and the cord that connects
the television to the DVD player--
burned umbrellas and Styrofoam 
(even though we knew that it's
supposed to give you cancer-- we
were already sick from the cold 
waiting heavy in our pores).
Feeling free of something once the flames
took we smiled-- dizzy and hallucinative
that we had made our own sun finally
and that the thunder could
not shake us and the air conditioning could 
no longer confine us to blanket cocoons.
We traded stories about August
and ate only marshmallows for dinner.
When morning came no one missed
the empty picture frames.
We only missed the heat
that we could only still feel in
the cooling ash in the middle
of our scorched carpet. 
   

We came for donuts and somehow ate with God. 

You and me, we have always
come to church for donuts.
And when we count the bells
we think of bear claws
and breaking open the light
sugar--chalk dust-- write
in the red jelly that might
have once been a fruit.
Weren't you scared it was blood.
So I asked my mother why
the bread and the wine didn't
actually look like body and 
blood and she told me that
to some people it did--
and I was scared of it.
Did you break the Boston cream
like bread? Did you find that
the inside was hollow like
Easter and were you looking
for lemon filling?
The chrism was crusty like glaze
and I never felt so full
and so guilty and so fried.
It's nice to walk away from 
an altar and know that even 
after it all we can still
serve oily dough together-- sit and
circles and pretend like
we didn't see anything. We
have all been Peter-- and by
the time the cock crows we have
already ready denied that
we eat donuts after crucifixions.
On occasion I have sat at the far table
where God sits and does Suduko
puzzles while we all make small talk--
he doesn't ask if I listened to
the Gospel according to Luke
or if I remembered to
kneel at the right time or
if I forgot to say the last 
line of the creed-- he asks
why I eat plain donuts.
God eats chocolate-iced donuts with 
rainbow sprinkles just
like my little brother. He
says that they remind him
that not everything has to be
so serious.
I tell him that they taste
like a home I've made up 
in my head. They taste like
the hands of my mother
across the room-- they taste
like safety-- like caves
and like empty tombs. You
are never disappointed in
a plain donut and they always
taste vaguely like
the donut that was seated besides
them in their little cardboard pews.
He asked me again if I liked
plain donuts or just the idea of
them. I denied him
three times before I told him
the truth that I preferred
donuts with the holes already 
cut into them and donuts
without powder to get on my
nice black dress and donuts
without glaze that always left me
feeling like confession and
donuts without cream and fruit
that remind me so much of
our bodies. He told me he understood.
He said he was glad that
someone ate the plain donuts--
he said his son liked coconut cream
donuts and his spirit was always 
in the mood for powdered--
I laughed and said that they
must of been who got
the white powder on my dress.

We drank from honey suckles like tea cups
and walked home with ticks tucked behind
our knees. 

So I asked you what 
we could eat if we all returned 
to the forest today. 
If there would be enough
for everyone to run away
like us with backpacks
of potato rolls and the
coiled bags of goldfish crackers.
Was it true that we could
drink creek water or would
it taste too warm and sea-foamy
like the water from the bathroom sink.
It was the sulking first week
of July
and everything was syrupy-- even
the the tops of our knees
were like sticky buns.
We took our first rest stop to wipe
our legs on the lawn of
the little church perched
on the backroad like
a gatekeeper. The building
had high cheek bones and a mouth
like an old woman. 
We were scared of it--
no one went to church on Sundays there.
The structure  was a street lamp 
in the dark oasis of corn
and wheat that swayed in a trance
of the wind.
I made duck calls from the flattest blades
of grass like our neighbor did.
You laughed and said that we couldn't eat
ducks and I told you that I knew that.
I spent the after noon collecting
the tiny red berries only
to find that neither of us knew
if they were poisonous. 
"I don't want to eat grass," you said
"It tastes too much like hair."
And we knew not to pick the corn
or the wheat because it wasn't
meant for forest people.
It was then we remembered that over
on the over side of the creek was the 
honeysuckle bushes that had the 
butterflies that acted like bullies.
They blinked their wings in your face
trying to keep the nectar to themselves.
We invited them to sit with us
in the tall grass and pretend
that it was sunset and not so dizzy
outside. The butterflies
always drank too much and fell asleep
on our sticky-bun knees.
You asked if we could live on
honeysuckle tea and I said
that that was a question for
another afternoon when it wasn't so 
hot and we weren't still running
away. Even though we walked in 
the opposite direction from home
we still always ended up there.
It was lucky because we had
split that last potato roll and 
dipped it in the nectar. You 
said I could have the whole thing
but I wanted to share it.
Our beds with the blankets
and the scraggy sheets felt like 
plastic wrap that night and we missed
the coolness of the grass.
You asked if it was possible to run away
and I told you the truth 
from my top bunk. I said I knew
it wasn't. That was when we found
the ticks behind our knees. You cried but I was 
used to it by now. The ticks
were to remind us that we get lost
when we only drink nectar and 
walk with sticky bun knees.
You told me you didn't want to leave
again and so the next
time I peeled off the ticks alone
and brought you a honeysuckle
to remind you of the church
that we were both so scared of. 

The ominous nature of Robins Egg Shells 
and glass chess sets.

Does anyone remember if
we broke like
robins eggs or like the blue
and yellow plates that match
the kitchen walls?
Only my brother and I
remember each dish falling one
by one in a parade of buffalo
chicken fingers and smudges of ketchup--
The congealed blood of after school
dinner at the counter
when my father played the role
of chef.
We were the ones who missed
the blue and yellow dishes. 
And I put together our jigsaw puzzle
of almost-holidays like the 
Forth of July or movie night from
the pieces I pick
out of my heels each night before
bed when I sleep in a house
that isn't a house that
doesn't have a kitchen 
or robins eggs. 
But dishes were meant to be broken
and so were robins eggs
so we shouldn't worry about 
how things that can break
always find their way to the 
floor almost as gentle
and as inevitable as my
mother letting down her hair
from the clip she has always
uses to pull those red-brown wavy strands
away from her face
when she makes burnt pancakes
with robins eggs in the morning.
And I only like burnt pancakes 
from Bisquick and wearing over coats
of strawberry jam. They always
taste somewhat like
the sky. That's why we use robins 
eggs-- sky cloudy with flour and 
cloudy with times I have
made pancakes and wiped
grease from my wrists and 
from the cast-iron pan.
The pan that makes
all of us uneasy because
the handle always smells like turkey sausage
links and the timidness of 
an anorexic cooking zucchini.
We all know why we don't like
glass chess sets and yes
they remind me of robins eggs too--
but there has always been
something fragile between us
when we sat on the floor and 
somehow always found ourselves
in a check-mate, you're my younger
brother-- you're not supposed 
to devour my bishops like dinner plates.
When we break the chess set-- make
sure that we can break it like a 
robin's egg-- I don't want to put
it back together. We all knew
you know how to move pawns and
that you always castle your way 
in for the kill. Let's at least
agree to give the robins
eggs so that we can have pancakes
when we're done. I don't remember
what the blue and yellow
dinner plates looked like
but I knew that we didn't mean
to break them. 

Was it the mulberries or the peach pits
that made us so sick?

I know it was you who taught me
how to eat mulberries and they
made us dizzy enough to lean
on wooden fences and pretend
that we could build new stars
from bottle rockets-- I never
liked the taste of breakfast 
when it simmers like a fried egg--
I can feel so much oil under my skin
from what I remember of being sick
off of mulberries. Mulberries
taste like watermelons when
it's July and you're not supposed to eat
them anymore and I told
you I loved you to try to mean it.
I made pancakes with mulberries
and bracelets with mulberries
and strung them around my room until 
they rotted and made everything
sick like wilting August-- but
we kept eating them and eating
them until we forgot that God made
honeysuckles and spearmint leaves
and yogurt. There was only mulberries.
When I first met you I kissed you 
with a peach pit that you threw back
into the garden. Years later 
we will return to find that a tree
has grown only it isn't a peach 
and there will be piles of mulberries 
like maple leaves. We can gather them
up to make a sort of jam to send
each other on Christmas and 
other holidays when I think
about breakfast and beach houses
and VHS tapes stacked underneath 
bunk beds like a books store.
Pick one for me and tell me
that we're brand new like DVDs
or pancake breakfasts.
You know when I kiss people
sometimes it still tastes like
syrup and the rip mulberries
we used to lean on like stars. 

The brevity of fireworks
and people without patience who light marshmallows on fire.

It is impossible to buy
enough fireworks for a seven-year-old
to fill up the darkness that is
left by late coming of
night in July. The kind of
night that leaves everything bagels
half-eaten on the table
in the morning and the kind
of night that never remembers 
to lock the front door
because the only unwanted guests
are the moths. 
The dizziness of the summer noon
bleeds out slow like a 
clementine or a scabbed knee 
and everything smells
like watermelon wrists and hot dog buns
and the moon. You never look at the moon
on the fourth of July
because you don't
want to remember how young
you are-- you think that at least
you can burn longer than a firework--
I remember the stale slabs we would
slide out into the middle of the yard
to make our stage. Earlier in the evening
we could break water balloons like communion
and catch fireflies like sweat off
the brow of the stars that had
already ceded to the summer-- but
the dusk made us all anxious-- we all
felt like we were bleeding and we
kept checking our scabs to see if
they had healed. 
My father was the stalwart.
We would wait for the sun to set
before we began our attack on
the entity of the night and the
brevity of our own hot dog buns.
We roasted marshmallows while we waited
and I was the one who ate fire--
while my father and my uncle
waited patiently in the rotation 
of golden brown sugar-- I was still
the one who ate fire-- and maybe it
was because I know that we only had
enough fireworks for thirty minutes
and my brother thought they
could last us through the night--
we always slept uneasy as if something
else were going to burst into 
tears or golden sparks like
the sugar edges of a marshmallow.
And there is something so final about
lighting the last firework--
they always let me do it--
not my father, not my brother, not
my uncle. I took the match and backed
away a moment too slow. I always
thought that the sparks on my skin
might feel like dandylion seeds-- I would ask
if we had more sparklers
or bottle rockets or marshmallows
and the answer was always and 
quiet shake of the head.
The the bouquet was brief
and the silence after was long
like standing around the edge 
of an open grave and waiting
for someone to know what to say.

I convinced them I was a Degas dancer
so I could sleep in the tea house
between the paper doors of the Art Museum.

I had considered being the handle
of the silver teapot in the
room set for ladies sewed into the
cages of their corsets in the hall
of the Americas-- I could taste my own
skin-- metallic and always faintly earl grey.
They would have known though--
The guards would have picked me
up and told me I was a silly girl
for thinking I could polish
myself like a 17th century teapot.
One guard might say more solemnly
"We've all tried. We've all tried,"
as he placed back the cup I attempted to take 
the place of. I thought that maybe
if I had enough time I could
find myself in the cotton-candy blur
of a Renoir boating trip or 
leaning on the railing of Monet's
bridge over a pond of water lilies
but I've never been blurry enough a
person for that-- I'm not a sunflower 
but I've had my knees cut for enough vessels 
to know that it wasn't worth it
to be in Van Gogh's vase-- though
my hair is ready and wilting. 
I tried to hide in the skeletons 
of a dead knights in the armor 
that told us that death and war
were shiny and stunning and graceful--
that honor was somewhere between your 
chest plate and your sweat that
left rust stains where your scars
should be. There's never been
enough chain mail to prevent
the kind of scars I get. I knew I could
be anywhere in the Renaissance halls--
I look enough like a martyr and we
all have the tendency to draw-on
gold halos in paint meant for model
Titanics perpetually sinking somewhere
for away from revolving doors and
the velvet rope that kept
reminding me that I wasn't an empress 
or a Buddha or a lilting sunflower skull.
It was all for the tea house.
They kept us back too far 
from the tea house and I saw it
and I knew that I had not slept 
since the sixth grade but
that somewhere between those paper doors
and in the dark patience of the Art Museum
that there was a kind of rest that is
reserved for dead things. The kind of
rest that we put plaques and dates on. The kind of
rest for impressionists and colonists
to share over in the great dining 
hall of a British King. They eat cakes
that look almost like Krimpets and
I'll have to tell them to turn out 
the lights when it gets past my bed time.
I'll just be here with everything 
else that's patient and made of paper.
I told them when they asked that
I was just a Degas dancer-- just
another Degas dancer because there were
so many. They told me I didn't look
like a young girl who should be 
dancing for men and I told them 
that Degas liked ruffles and shadows
and lace. I told them that he liked to dance
but let our feet do the work-- his type
of dance was in the fry of a brush
or in the finesse of his thumbs over
a clay chin.  
They shown the flash light in my face
but I sealed my eyes closed
like the lids of urns up the hall
that might have once held ash--
I told them I was a Degas dancer because
I needed to sleep like one--
needed a place to belong with
a name tag that called me by
my maker instead of by my name--
there are so many of us out
there and we were ruffles and only
sometimes share cake with the blurry
women of Monet's arthritic wrists.
The guards knew I wasn't a Degas dancer
but I was close enough for them to click
off their flash lights lock 
the doors to the tea house for the night.
One whispered, "I was one too you know?
I was a Degas dancer even though
I would have much rather descended a 
staircase for the kind of sleep
that only comes from museums 
and the craftsmanship 
of all the dead thumbs.

How do you know this body was once yours
and who can say they own it now?

I've tried to make a home out of my skin
with pocket knives and gnawed nails--
Out of the punishment of bent knees
and the quiet silence of rib-cage jaws
when they chew you quiet like peanuts
or the wet oatmeal with dried apples. 
I've written my skin in sharpies,
black ball point pens, and apologies--
temporary teeth marks on the
wrist of a human who
is eaten each new morning like
a cherry cough drop by the
men who prep each square
centimeter of her flesh for 
surgery-- they all want a piece--
The butcher-- the clever-- the 
cherry cordial heart of a human
who doesn't know how many men
have owned her shoulders--
I've pulled out my own blood
like a rapier but I've only
ever cut my wrists like soup lids--
lazy and congealed my tongue
is the harnessed glory of a
the collection of men who have 
made claims on my clavicles 
and planted flags in my palms
to let me know that my skin has never 
been mine-- and I've had girls write
"love" on my arms like everyone
else but I have always felt like
a tourist to my own torso-- 
"And when did we get so tired
and when did we get so old" I'll 
say when I finally forget
what bananas taste like--but I 
can tell you that I know
there are places that the men
with the flags can't have and have 
not seen-- they will make pot roast
from the chicken-nugget silhouettes
of my thighs but I still have
my cheek bones. They don't know my
cheeks bones because none of them
ever kissed me like you
should kiss a piece of chocolate.  
I still have the stitches you know?
We all have to stitches from incomplete 
surgeries and anorexic acupuncture
When I name the men who own my
skin I don't mean people with
larger hands than mine-- I mean
the fingers that rummage under my 
skin like a strip-search every morning--
like a pick pocket-- like a centipede.
And I know I know I know it was mine 
that once-- that one time this body was
mine and I had no other fingers but
my own and I used to paint my nails
more patient colors like mauve
now I save purple for
the kidney bruises I keep
lodged in my throat. I can tell
you this body was once mine
and I can tell you I'm not the land lord--
this is not a renters game--
I am a border-- the indentured servant
to men with square calculators
who add me up add me up add me up
just to times me by two and divide
me by the square footage of my
femurs-- they have told me rent
is do but I've run out of
new ways to pay them.
Tell them I'll have it soon--
and for now I can offer them
what's left of a box 
of cherry cordials and
the collection of
things I've written above my knees. 

Why did you run and from who?

I ran from my own rib cage
burnt myself like sage-- ran
to put out the fire that it started
in my ankles-- in the brambles 
down by where we used to get
tick bites on our thighs--
my father dressed the parasites in
red nail polish until they died woozy
and drunken like a top-heavy
twelve-year-old who wanted to be 
a firework while also becoming 
the ash. I don't know why I ran--
I ran like the cap of a pill bottle
I ran like a washing machine
and I'd collect the pennies after
the spin cycles--
even if they were all sea foam green
I mean I would keep them like
veal medallions and scallions
in my pockets for a dinner
I never wanted to eat--
I ran, I ran, I know I ran 
from dinner plates-- I only eat from
bowls  now because they
are round the like all the things I
fear and all the things I run from--
I ran like timers for bread that would 
never burn
because the oven wasn't even on--
Charred my knees in the toaster
where I was trying to bake
an apology-- don't worry about me
I know it's an addiction and I know
it's going to be back and I know
it'll put me on the edge
of a forever fall-- I'll die
someday from the bread timer
break me when I'm gone and tell
them that I rose higher than the brambles--
but no-- today I'll run from nothing
but the Jupiter beetles--
I'm still running from a girl
who isn't a girl but
also isn't a loaf of bread or a penny.
She wants to die like a statue
but I want to know her like a firework work--
paint her cheeks in ash and 
tell her she can run her mind like a bread timer
and rest her burnt ankles
in the quiet places left
in my rib cage.