What You Told Me You Needed

The skin on your wrist,
translucent as onion peel,
the blue tinge of skim milk

I recall the apricot blush that would
mottle your cheeks- natural rouge painted
on by Tuesday nights spent not watching movies

Instead counting breaths- the rise and
fall of seconds sliding away
like grains of sand.

The gritty sweet feel of your tongue on my lips that
would make me frantically recite elements in the periodic table
dead presidents- the multiplication tables

Tiny rivulets carving grooves in the velour
of your cheeks, brought on by
missed conceptions and over a
house that was becoming cluttered with purple elephants

The day we tore down the wall paper, a massacre
of steamrolled baby ducks coated the hall carpet
to a background of slamming doors and expresso makers

Spider-spun tangle of indigo veins, living in your eye-lids,
mirrored in the bruise of your fingernails
I turn off the faucet as roses bloom

Copper Cupcakes

A cigarette sneaks through bullet-hole blasts of sugar pebble sand
inching an ankle onto the fake woven blanket that speaks with my mother's voice
I'll rock you through sunburnt aloe absent late evenings
Calloused feet burning a lucky charm path of footprints through the asphalt

Garbage cans dot the butter dappled beach, freckles of refuse rust-
ruins of liver spotted hands rubbing sun screen on the children you
could never decide if you wanted

Tongues bit off mid sentence, leaving flapping mouths like trout gaping for breath,
a hook adorning your upper lip; they smile while their mouthsfillupwithblood

The disntant clink of glass clad corona dances a tango with the pier's monotonous horn

Drowning

Fish-lips chapped and pursed

covered in my mother’s lipstick-

the shade they discontinued that

differed from the color of my father’s collars

suck the marrow from my spine

as I wince and writhe,

pleasure centers making hollow homes

in my collarbones for masochistic lovers

Curled toes that hug the end of wooden

diving boards, poised and solemn

perched on the pressure of knowing you

were given more choices than your parents were

Bubbles prick the surface of a syrup coated pond

dappled shades of honey-wheat

a trench coat cover for four years of

planning on American Beauty that didn’t end in a bang