Dial Tone

It was that year I subsisted

Entirely on the tasteless hope

That disintegrated on my tongue

Shortly after mouthing amen.

I can still feel the day old despair

Lodged deeply in my throat.

I spent those evenings on heaven’s hotline,

My knuckles knocking against the ribs

of the phone cord that wrung tightly around my heart.

I was seeking salvation.

I spoke only to the angels with appetites larger than longing.

There are few things more

Deadly than a girl who is capable of

Cutting her hunger up into even smaller pieces,

Each one sharper than the one before.

They bite. I have spent most of my life trying

To grow a thicker skin, ensuring that I would not

bleed out every time I felt those teeth scrape up against me.

I feared that hunger, the massacre of mouths.

But I did not yet know how to escape my body, or how to stay.

Body & bed unmade. The

Ache I swallowed in the middle of the night

Was not my own. It continues to chase me through

The crowds of half-eaten smiles.