to the girl i buried when i could still see in color

to the girl i buried in the backyard i never had. 

i visited your grave within the photo album, with your too wide smile and haunted eyes; did you know you looked so scared? 

i see you in abandoned houses, in rusted bikes and bloody knees. 

(Mama tells me ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you’ 
i ask her ‘can I bite the hand that beats me?’ 
because i see you in swaying ropes and the glinting knives; in the paper-thin scars on my thighs, neatly stacked.) 

you told me once that the ocean always takes back what has been borrowed. 
 
with rosewater tears and sunken cheeks, I never told you how much I wanted to drown. 
 
 
this trauma has made me angrier, made my teeth sharp and my bones brittle. i am a wild dog, unable to be tamed, snarling and biting, sea foam pouring from my mouth. 

lets take you out back, ill bring the gun you bring the flowers. 
 
 

no one wants what’s been broken. 

Mama tells me to be grateful, scolds me to be softer. i tell her in another life i may have been easier to love. 
 
she clutches my razor blade arms, pulls me close and holds me, tries to force the pieces back together. i am too much though, too sharp to touch, i burn white hot and incinerate what i dare love. 
 
(you were born in the winter, maybe that's why you're so cold, maybe that’s why you never care when your lips turn blue and your joints go stiff.) 

baby if you bring the booze ill bring the bullets, we can numb the pain and let our bodies be swallowed up by the waves.  

im digging you up tomorrow.