The Warmth of Burnt Saplings

A few imperative fractions of yourself

have been missing

since the summer in which you turned twelve.

This will attract men of a particular nature

with limited intelligence

who will try and fill in your blanks with their extra pieces

until you are a complete word

of their

lower understanding.

They will call you absolve

or remedy

or numbing.

When you are a fourteen-year-old child

you begin to feel trapped in

the growing body of a call girl.

This is also when you will learn that darkness can carry names

other than twilight and eclipse.

Sometimes these names sound human

and taste like crisis.

At sixteen your dreams consist of your mother

shaking your shoulders

until they crave eruption.

She cries for you long after you have stopped doing it for

yourself.

Some mornings when you are alone you hear whispers

from the you that only resides in unframed hotel mirrors.

You are envious of that hallowed being,

who views each one of your lefts as their right.

Shortly after you turn seventeen your reflection begins to fade

and a fear of your newly born curves has grown in its place.

A longing for the sharpness of your recent youth has begun to

corrupt you.

Only your hands and wrists have stayed the same,

pruned and propped through the loveless labors of an

insincere admirer.

He will call you withered

or spent

or imitation.