My first boyfriend wanted to be permanent, so he carved his initials
into my bedpost with all my leftover bobby pins. Then he spent an hour
searching in between my thighs for the sadness he lost when he was
eighteen, then found again two years later, then lost a third time.
Yesterday I sat down with all the corpses of my past
and had dinner with them, the girl at the head of the table
slicing poisonous apples and handing them out, dripping,
to every set of pale hands. But even Snow White
couldn’t refuse an offer like that. Sometimes the weight
of my own skin feels so heavy that I’d like to take it off,
drape it over the back of a chair like a waterlogged sweater.
But my second boyfriend taught me that bruises
are not permanent
if they become replaced with new ones
over and over again.