Your Mouth
Poem. Published in Red Light Lit’s Love is the Drug & Other Dark Poems: A Poetry Anthology (2018).
Your Mouth
Use your inside voice. Use common sense. Use your head. Use your brain. Use your words. Use your tongue. Use your eyes. Use your legs. Use your arms. Cross your arms. Close your eyes. Cross your legs. Cross your ankle over your other ankle until the tiny, silver buckle of your 6-inch heel brands your skin where it’s taut, where it’s paper. Cross your thighs until they’re salt, until they’re wet, until they stick, until they rip when you uncross them. Speak up. Speak louder. Say something. Why didn’t you call. Why didn’t you scream. Why didn’t you tell anyone. Why didn’t you tell me. Why didn’t you cross your arms. To hold the beat in, hold your breath. Why didn’t you hold your breath. Why didn’t you cross yourself. Why don’t you pray. Why didn’t you beg. Why didn’t you drop heavy to cheap carpet, bruising kneecaps, and beg. Why didn’t you use your elbows. Your blushing elbows. Why didn’t you use your hands. To push. Scratchy, hairy chests. Hot and fleshy chests. Tattooed chests. Smooth, broad tan ones like alien galaxies with 17 orbiting crescent moons. Why didn’t you use your palms. Why didn’t you use your fists. Why didn’t you use your fingers. Why didn’t you scratch with your shiny, lacquered, stiletto nails. Why didn’t you bite your bottom lip with your incisor till it trembled. Why didn’t you shake till wet penny taste flooded your mouth. Why didn’t you use your tongue. To lick your lips. To scream. Until your vocal chords turned wool. Why didn’t you use your throat. Why didn’t you spit. Why don’t you remember. Why don’t you write it down in your diary with a purple-glitter gel pen. And rip the page where you wrote it from the spine of your diary. Why don’t you hold the page to the flame of a white lighter with its safety torn off. And watch your words darken, metamorphosis. Butterfly over sharp rocks that break silty water. Watch your words float over bleached empties and dusty creek banks mapped with boot prints. Fly, burning, into the sun. Why didn’t you walk out. In the rumbled hush of 4am, holding your shoes in your left hand. Why didn’t you run down the dark street, bare feet collecting glass, asphalt-stain, your pupils wide, flash-bulb, in the buzzed-orange, as soon as you heard the latch click behind you. Why didn’t you just leave. Why didn’t you just scream. Why didn’t you say anything. Why didn’t you use your mouth.
