she lay in bed with a barbed wire spine and
hollow bird-wing bones
where she lets the gods sleep

burning blacksmith breaths slipped out of her star-dusted lungs
like cigarette smoke
coffee-ringed pupils flickered back and forth like an uncertain mind
she could feel the birds beating their wings against
her riveted monkey-bar ribcage

she hopes to keep breathing the constellations,
twist them in her lungs just to stay alive,
hopes to keep licking up Saturn's rings and
have galaxies dribbling down her chin
so she can mop them up with her sleeve
she hoped the moon could see her withthe cosmos
that curled into her collarbone
and the nebulas that wrapped softly
around her rusting wrists
like a lover's touch

her thoughts are lost in siren chorus and hot asphalt
but she thought he still might hear her
might nurse her back to health
like he did with the sky when she stole the stars
and hung them in her bedroom to feel less lonely

but the moon was too much of a narcissist
to really care about her, anyway

her daddy is a shadow in the polaroid living room
swirling glasses above his head and
dreaming of whiskey ghosts
her mama ran out with a cardboard box
and a handful of aspirin
and now her daddy lives on his couch
and tells her that dreams are beaten out
of a pillow case,
says that the knife he carved her wrists with
that ran up her back,
that cracked her vertebrae in half
and made her skin curl up near the seams –
taught her to leave the sky alone.

she hopes to leave her bedroom blinds
and continue to let the cosmos pool in her porcelain palms
but the moon doesn't help
he listens the mechanical footsteps of the clock lull her
to sleep
as she waits for the sun's touch.