Instructions for Assembly

I
Dust my thighs for prints, you’ll find
no one else has outlined me. Unhinge
my femur and take me
home.


II
The curve
of my stomach thanks
your unapologetic fingers.


III
Climb into the shadow of
my ribcage, summit
my collarbone, circle twice
and curl up
to sleep
in my valleys.


IV
My spine hangs from coathanger
skull, bones like Natural History
puzzle pieces.
(The seventh and eighth
vertebrae supply the small muscles
of my hand, which opens like a lotus
when your lips bless me with nerve fire.)


V
My curls catch your fingers like whispers or dry leaves.
Take the stray hairs you find on your clothes
and thread them into birds’ nests. They tuck beaks
under wings while my throat crows lullabies
in a house four miles down the road.

Untitled

I

Tiny silver sails catching the breath I leave,
carrying small craft across seashell cochlea to dock
in Buzzard’s Bay, where my grandfather taught me
to avoid the boom as it swings overhead.

Sails unfurl in my fingers
open bedsheets
airing out
and the same wind whispers
family dinners underwater, burbling about our day
filling your mouth with the same salt water


II

That night,
I osmosed you through humming peripheries,
rocking, swaddled
in swelling chords and dark speckled
with die-cut moonbeams (illuminating the first
of things I’ll know)
bobbing on wind waves