a thousand and one nights

a body overcome with ripeness

glaring from the far side of the room. ENTER 

desire & skinned peaches rotting in off-white linen 

sheets. a kitchen counter stained yellow with turmeric

rippling across your acne. i learn easy 

your embrace has almost as many hands

as you have mouths, threading my braids with 

with baby teeth & piano wire. dissonant parallels, 

we’re a major seventh, or maybe a minor second;

this feels like my mother’s love

or perhaps my father’s hate.

all my nights become yours,

all thousand and one of them. 

here is how i await the executioner. 

cotton-mouthed, still strung 

tight across the loom, i flicker

like warehouse light bulbs – radiating heat

just to regurgitate. i’m throwing myself at you &

you’re throwing accusations back. i’m straining echos 

through rusted colanders & you’re watching my 

fish skeleton choke 

on schoolyard air. i’m molting

with your larynx as birdcage. no –

it must be me who is crazy, blistering

like sweet plums skins beneath your gaze. at my core, 

a pit splintered with your sin. do you understand it 

now, how deserving i am of you? it could be worse, 

though. there could be kerosene festering in my cavities

instead of your saliva. 

i have died too many times to live forever with you.

please, sultan, let me go.

no one believes dead girls anyways, 

just wish their corpses

safe passage.