she wonders when her words
will stretch their limbs out beyond the dots
pressed into her palms. when they will curve like
baby leaf sprouts and whither when they fall. she is
tired of plastic. of the way her pen smells like
bitter tea or orange peels, she wants flesh and bones
and blood, when she needs it. there are only so many
ways a character can cry and she wants to experience
all of them, graze her tongue over heartbreak and
despair and anger and jealousy and joy and see if they all taste
the same. water and salt mix a thousand different
ways. she can only imagine five. When you’re older,
her mother says. but she is seventeen already and
time is rushing through her fingers like sand, brushing past her
like a boy she wishes she knew how to kiss. her lips are too soft,
too bare, and his are only an outline. she thinks of the boys
on tv. there is always too many teeth, too much breathing,
not enough skin. she wants to draw them into her poems,
line their eyes with hope and fear and love,
give them a family or a dog or a gun and tell them to live but
You’re too young, and she imagines driving her mother’s
black Toyota into the ocean and watching waves part until the
sun sinks down next to her.