ring me out

scratch my back, you said,
and i’ll scratch yours.
but i could never reach the spot
that you needed
touched.
maybe it was my too small hands,
or short arms,
but the distance of your skin remained 
too far to feel. 
and now i turn myself
inside out, like a winter coat,
and ask myself why
i cannot keep warm. 

kaleidoscopic pressure

let every part of you drop;
let each joint sink back
down through the soil of which you grew from. 
put what beats you on ice,
and freeze it,
and remember what warmed you.
that heat, which clouded 
your body, and burned through the half moons
under your eyes.
you once thought,
that your chest
could no longer hold all of the fingerprints which
you’d laid upon it;
but you had only just begun.
and now every groove 
of skin is just another corner
where two ends have met, 
if only to move
farther than the tides.

sour lips

how do you keep cherry blossom cheeks,
and remain poised with a bloom that i have yet to know?
what keeps you in tact
when wrinkles seep through your skin,
through the depth of you,
and your heart is no longer young?
you became so good at tying knots,
my girl scout.
you weaved words and tightened feelings,
and you swallowed each knot
as though they were cherry pits in the summertime;
but now you’re tangled.