Member Poem

I want you to peel back the flesh and look into what is left of me.

To hang your weight on my spine, to wrap yourself in the horror of me.

I want you to pick at the splinters of my bones, to run your fingers through the marrow.

I want your hands to cut themselves on my porcelain heart, and linger as the blood soaks away the dust of neglect gathered there.

I want to be gulped into the cracks of your parched soul, to be the salve for your salted wounds.

Be my plaster cast, set my crooked bones and I will eat your heartaches, devour them whole.

I want the quiet between us to be filled with the words we hold curled under our hungry tongues.

I want to cut my teeth on your desire and learn what it is to be felt— to feel.

I want you to strangle the stars, fill the world with dark, turn our fingertips to eyes,

And see me.

Empty me, take my breath and hold it in your throat until my aching lungs beg my lips to retrieve it.

Etch your voice into my skin, trace the words that stick to me like paste with your trembling fingers.

Learn the shapes of the fears that dance in my chest, I will whisper you their secrets.

Chew on my thoughts, swallow their taste, and I will change my mouth to fit around your name.

Run your lips across the sacred corners of my loneliness—of every ugly lie I’ve ever told.

I will show you the craters, the caverns, the taken chunks of me.

I can tell you about them, how I miss them.