content warning: this poem contains imagery and content related to self-harm

The beads are cold bones
around the marrow, a plastic string,
so elastic
it will never break.
The bracelet, raised from a cemetery
of garments.
I dress my corpse
in many colors, and I latch the shackle
of a beige cross.

Why have I let you in
after all this time?

My right wrist is a desert
presenting her dozen dry riverbeds.
I drained the red rapids
to white sand,
under a moon pale as
God's skull.
And I set the cross
among bones
as a gravestone –
for the blistering heat, my ardent
death,
that I laid to rest
in the cool relief
of desert nights.

I've let you in, under the stars and over
the grave.