My body is a candle flaming on the bottom instead of the wick.
Consequently, I burn myself trying to understand my own skin
whenever I make New Years resolutions that involve surviving
to the next New Year instead of enjoying the current one.
If someone were to crack upon my chest like a nutshell,
they’d find out my heart was a metaphor for hell:
it froze over eons ago, back when my wrists were still cities
I wasn’t trying to raze to the ground.
One month before winter comes, it’s a personal tradition
to tear out one tooth with my own bare palms and a piece of twine
and leave it, bloody, dripping, beneath my pillow
in hopes that the tooth fairy will come
so I can finally figure out what it feels like to believe in something again.
The saddest thing in the universe is watching
icicles skydive from the roofs of houses:
they don’t realize how beautiful it is to fall down
because they’re so focused on making it to the ground.