You cut yourself out of cereal boxes, press against guitar strings
that rip your fingertips open - exposed, you choke
on E minors, you cough up plectrums
and words that sound like 'sorry'.

I do not know you well, but I do know you are kind
and inside something pulls on wire, there is something soft
trapped in cogs, new bedsheets or maybe
it's your heart. I bet he said he didn't mean to
make your eyelashes clump together
and your skin feel like a tambourine. Clay is --
a substance that gets harder under intense heat,

         this is not an example of chemical weather, just kiln hands
         and a girl with silt burnt into her cuticles because too much electric
         is trapped, it slams against lazy organs and slips through tubes
         under-flesh.

Your elbows remind me of tea cups,
something boils between china lips
and the edge of your eyelids no longer look like horizon lines,
but a pink saucer crashing against bedroom walls --

they taste salt-splashed, today. Digging into cement
you want to rest there, like dust. There is not much air to filter
anymore.