love disease

A girl adores a boy whose eyes
are almond-shaped, or wicked,
or coked out. I know there’s
a death somewhere, a disaster

and a trembling of the crystal
chandeliers of a singed-out
house. Soon I begin to steal
all the fish bowls, fill them

with dollar store perfumes and
funeral pamphlets. Hamburger
wrappers and broken credit
cards. The way all the mess

and debris lick white and sweet
like glue on my tongue. I’m
paralyzed with phrases like
tainted and tattered. Turned on.
Have gone wild with thirst for

fishing wire and broken teacups.
The boys get their revenge by
wooing girls onto floating bridges,
by sniffing through their diaries,

by breathing, by drowning.
I remember all the water towers
in the ring of skin at your
neckline while my body arcs

backwards into the most terrible
circus. When I said there were
gnats in the tortilla chips and
hot tears like ladders in my

ponytails I meant it. I’ll stare
down the eyes of moths because it
makes me hot. Hard to handle. And
it’s not that I’m pretentious or

melancholy, there’s just something
in the basement that won’t stop
wriggling. It sounds succulent,
like a ballerina, or a bomb shelter.  
My fingers still chalky from when

you fucked me against the dry wall.
It’s hard when I get all
translucent, hand-stitched and
raised from reality. Your name

written and bleeding in every
water-logged composition book in the
tub. I kept your little coffin
buried in my heart because I wanted
to be a student of grief.