do not : call him

you're sipping on the taste of his tongue through the ice cold water 

you hold fragile like liquid

crystal in a hollow cup and its

-4 outside but all you can feel is the heat behind your eyelids as your skin crackles

papery soft whispering to your cheek to 

calm down 

and you make note of the holes in your mouth and the

cavities in your chest and the gaps between your thighs where

he stubbed you out like a cigarette

and everything is warm warm warm even though when you breathe

(if you are even breathing)

there is a cloud of white that 

evaporates into the air

and it burns burns burns in your stomach like the acid is taking a trip 

up

your throat and barefoot and naked you lay curled

upon the grass in your front yard willing strangers

to watch you moon bake

and the taste of his hair litters your pillows and you wish you didn’t

have a name that he could have ruined

like your bed

at 4am one summer morning 

and all the people in the street 

heard it 

not as a name, but as a 

prayer

and your mother sits you down at the table and makes 

you tea and you sip it softly until it too, is cold

when your hipbones dig into the mattress at night, 

when the trees bend and dance into each other, 

when the man at the petrol station looks like

him, 

when the shower water is steaming upon your skin, 

do not call him