i don't really feel like fighting.

ode to body.

there is a rose garden i am cultivating beneath the

lining of my skin, turbulent land that seethes and

foams in my sleep, the only thing that soothes

my dreams of heat and earth. i am stumbling through

the underbrush of my own aches and desires. hold a

flame up to these wrists of mine, watch the forest of

my body slink together like melting wax, like two

slow dancers shifting into one with feet glued to high

school gymnasium floors. his head here, her hands

here, a place for every body and every place on the

body; order order order.

he says: i would still love you if you burned it all to

the ground. their bodies like exploding stars;

enmeshing and dying and bright, my body like a great

prairie, the rumbling endless scream of earth and the

whisper of grass that beneath this tries to be heard.

where were we? she is burning it all to the ground.

and he was wrong, he doesn't know how to love her

anymore. she was bound to end up this way. stars can't

help but burn. their bodies spill light everywhere, and

the world shivers in its heat and its fear. this earth

fears itself, or the consequences of itself, or the

destruction of itself. she told me this because she

knew i would understand.

breaths and steps and life moving on, the sounds of

everything and the sounds of the stars, and the sound

of her watching the wisteria grow in my throat.

in the most elegant of disasters,

the white dress is still stained red.

when i run out of bridges to burn,

i'll set myself on fire. my body will understand.