A Girl Named Ars Poetica

My bathroom tiles have seen, heard, felt, and suffered

through more tears than your busted up, popped out shoulder

I so desperately reach to stabilize and claw into

With my poorly uncut finger nails.

If salvation is the feeling of my saliva dripping off my tongue

Settling into the grooves of your own,

Then maybe, suddenly,

I do want to be saved.

I’ll read to you until the vocal fry in my voice sounds like tv static

As if you fell asleep on your mama’s couch watching Full House,

The connection between the antennas and power altering drastically

Like the longing when our hands aren’t locked.

We will listen to the soft pitter patter of the rain

Gulping up water that’ll clog up the storm drain

Until I have found you asleep on my bathroom floor

Tear stained shoulders, bubbling foam, crystalized eyes and all.

I reach your tear stained, clawed up shoulder

And brush the cuts with my spicy stained finger tips

Until you jolt up just so I can say it’s the medicine to cure

The pain— and you’ll remember my finger tips.

Can you touch my skin with your own until there’s a film

Of deep red coating the fairness, so that no one can see the beauty

Other than your crystalized eyes that I inhabited in

The second you said “I love you.”