Yesterday your mouth tasted like dust
and I found myself trying to sweep it away with the broom.
In ancient Incan culture there is a belief
that bones belong to their owner
until that owner dies.
Sometimes I find myself out walking late at night
just to see if I can drop those bones off somewhere
along the way
but all the landfills in New York are heaped to the brim.
Once I met someone with AIDS and I asked him why;
he said Because I fucked the only man I ever loved.
He didn’t have enough money for medication
so he paid with the silverware instead.
What kind of world do we live in
where a woman can’t mourn her own miscarriage?
There was a news story on TV the other night
about a woman who held a funeral for her stillborn daughter.
Tell me that wasn’t the most beautiful goddamn thing you’d ever seen.
Make me believe it.
Sometimes I want to pull back my hair
and lean over the toilet bowl
until my soul escapes
and swims through the pipes,
but then I think of the way your hipbones jut out like handles
so I put my soul back in my mouth
and I close the lid.