i
the first guy i kissed told me you have this crazy thing
where you refuse to settle within reasonable confidence
on anything. it’s like this constant pull where you refuse
to ever align yourself anywhere– talk about feeling
disconnected! i kissed him to prove him wrong. anyway,
i’ve been studying the migration of sunlight by collecting
all the sweat i’ve ever sweat in a bucket. to know you,
i’ve been eating flowers and bisecting whole trophic levels.
ii
having it all is like killing my teenage grandparents. i hide
in a farm before the job; it reminds me of summer camp.
a foot away, someone says she’s using that bug spray like perfume. really,
i was coaxing gnats to stand on my elbow. i hold myself near orphaned
goats, cooing i don’t love you, please keep licking me. months
ago, they raced into a storm to prove they could swallow all
this world’s relentless water. now, their mother won’t look
at them and i am covered in goat shit, screaming look at me: i am the land’s land.
iii
the deeper you go, the weirder it gets. a couple prays
over goat stew at our table. boys trudge through birthdays,
trying to figure out when their parents last fucked. i lie
between strangers like a pin nestled in a puzzle; when my friend
feels lonely, i steal flowers from a grave i trampled days back.
last night, we tossed puzzle pieces across a table for hours
before realizing my parents had never been born. in another world,
i am still leaving my hair anywhere– loving anyone.
ii
I’ve left dinner to stare myself down in the bathroom.
I need to be touched and I don’t know what to say next.
i
My first day home, I don’t finish what I started. Instead, I force
mud into my bath sponge, align my empty space
to walk through lovers. More and more, I am leaving the scene
to study pinpricks and clotted bug spray: everywhere I go,
kids gape at me, not sure why I’m still waiting to be claimed. I know
too well that there is nothing hostile in the way they scatter;
how, in their world, the land is just the land.
2025