Heart- Shaped Balloons
She had once kissed the cold, glossed lips of men
against the powder- pink walls of her room
she slept underneath their vertically thin bodies
and often woke to discover a head with a body curled
tightly up the wall in a swirl like the shell of a snail.
She had thought that the body that lay by her side, with
arms that threaded through her like needles was a man
of substance and his lips were warm with pulsing blood
his tongue dizzy with sugar fizzed in the stifling room of
her mouth and his skin rolled into her like soft dough.
He had fingers that were ballerinas with dislocated hips
but she relished in their burning tips that woke something
within her, that until now had lay dormant and unspoken,
he made her molten by lapping at the teardrop of her stomach
white wings flew up over her head, as toes clenched like talons.
For months her head had ridden on the wave of his smooth chest
but the morning came when stillness gripped her by frozen arms,
their liquid limbs had dispersed, her body skinned and bared
and she tried to press her lips to his neck to resuscitate his heart
like a balloon, unresponsive, he drew the flat line.
