If love could fit inside you
it would eat you
from the inside out.
Hunger eating hunger
until you’re just
a girl again.
–Caitlyn Siehl, Rumination
He
doesn’t want
my good heart in my good body
he wants my mouth
on a plate
metal fork clicking against his tongue
my lipstick staining his gums
He wants to touch me
where it hurts and only
where it hurts
He wants to take me home
He wants to carve me up
into something metallic
something sharp
wants to carve me up until I’m
small enough to swallow gasoline
and talk to God
Every night he sharpens his steel on
the hipbone he made from me
Kisses the mouth he took
the one that says his name right
and doesn’t bite
Sometimes he calls me baby and I
swallow my own tongue
Sometimes he hands me the knife
just to watch me give it back.
my good heart in my good body
he wants my mouth
on a plate
metal fork clicking against his tongue
my lipstick staining his gums
He wants to touch me
where it hurts and only
where it hurts
He wants to take me home
He wants to carve me up
into something metallic
something sharp
wants to carve me up until I’m
small enough to swallow gasoline
and talk to God
Every night he sharpens his steel on
the hipbone he made from me
Kisses the mouth he took
the one that says his name right
and doesn’t bite
Sometimes he calls me baby and I
swallow my own tongue
Sometimes he hands me the knife
just to watch me give it back.
We drank the elbow room.
Wandered into the wine glass.
Cradled the birds.
You held my yellow dress
in your picnic hands.
A sun was in your eyes.
The kiss was warm and
soft.
I could taste your teeth.
Your mouth was a thousand
mothers weeping.
We ate the sad sounds,
chewed them slow, shared
the broken.
We danced the slow burn.
Tongued the wound.
Laid the blanket.
All was well in the hunger,
in the wet grass.
Wandered into the wine glass.
Cradled the birds.
You held my yellow dress
in your picnic hands.
A sun was in your eyes.
The kiss was warm and
soft.
I could taste your teeth.
Your mouth was a thousand
mothers weeping.
We ate the sad sounds,
chewed them slow, shared
the broken.
We danced the slow burn.
Tongued the wound.
Laid the blanket.
All was well in the hunger,
in the wet grass.
you chew on loneliness until the mint flavor's gone, forget it's even in your mouth until you swallow it.
We happened.
Like a f.ucking circus blowing through town, we happened,
left wrappers and pinwheels littering the ground like dead bodies.
Like the end of a war.
You moved around the house so gracefully, never touching me,
and I laughed because I thought
it was your best act,
waited hours for your hands because I didn’t
want to miss the rest of the show.
We walked past each other
like a trapeze act, like acrobats
on a tightrope, arms spread
on either side like it would save them from falling,
and we were the best act around.
The tent opened, and we were beautiful, effortless, jumping through
rings of fire, catching each other in mid-air, wearing our best clothes.
You loved me so well with the doors open.
You loved me so well with an audience,
but I don’t want the circus anymore.
I don’t want it.
I want to bury it six feet under,
mourn it like a casualty and then move on.
Chalk it up to something that sounds
less like an empty fairground where
we fired our first shots, where we
first started to fracture like a bone.
We may not have worked, but,
my God,
were we good at pretending.
My God,
were we something to look at.
– Caitlyn Siehl
