insect

i miss the words,

but not the pain

i miss the paper that cut my skin but bandaged memories

i miss laying in a tangle of sheets and pen ink that stained my body

and the way i could empty myself into a little painted book

now we meet on silent streetlights

and we laugh and fill the air

little jezebels drunken in basement cafes and the men wave from their cars and leave

and the girls forget and drum their boots down coke-lined sidewalks, wet tile

there is nothing inside now,

infertile from little pills,

like the cicadas we die prophetically,

como la cigarra said the girl,

so she emptied her stomach into the sink and undressed herself to bathe,

to wash and drain music too beautiful,

music she did not want to feel,

music like a gilded street in a dirty city

baltimore, three years ago and i was another child,

heat like oil from which they crawl and fly and shed their shells, heat that pressed against my body

we are insects born and gone again