Starve

DISCLAIMER: This is not my poem. I have received permission from Kristy Bowen, the poet, to use her piece as as a spoken word post. "Starve" is my all-time favorite poem of hers. Hope you enjoy.

Starve

She must have been a strange
thing in that light, the folded
backbone, the fitful
spawning. How the trees
dreamed they were girls
without feet, without eyes,

and her such a pale thing.
Consonants fail in the dim
hours, a euphoria of horizon,
or objects, or drowning.
We are kitchen matches

in winter; our throats ache
with want. Paint chips
from the railing
and the widowed cells
remember the quiet of

windowpanes, ribcages.
The moons of our nails
taste salty and bloodish.

the only good girl is a dead girl -
the only good girl is
lemons, windchimes, slice of thigh.

My bones are looking
for something to lick. Car crashes
fill our mouths, sugared and thrashing.
Beneath the pinks of our dresses,
in our collarbones, there is famine.