in a white dress, and a list
of hip hop songs. I don’t need
to remember the paper’s frayed edges

or the pink ink of your handwriting
because it rests in between papers
of conversations in cluttered corners,
poetry now locked in a wood cabinet.

if blood is thicker than water, paper
does not even begin to compare to a heart
that should have been locked away, too.

these shared and stolen nicknames
are a poor price of repayment for
gossamer snowflakes on cherry tongues,
hands folding the ends of lilac skirts.

we hang suspended like the moon,
dangling by a spider web whose threads
are your skin, your nails, your flesh,
your fingers’ fleeting margin notes.

midnight fantasies of a lighter, the quick
flick of wrist; I keep them where I sleep,
and when I close my eyes

they are all I see.