You’ll have to kiss my finger raw I’ll never know how to strangle a thing as soft and stubborn as you, your shoulder: a tender plum, bruise it with my lips before i even take a bite in our covert hideaway of blankets, your pink flesh on my blood-stained sheets, you’re my paper wrapped prey And, oh, how I pray every night just your name and a mouthful of fruit, raw thumb digging in to find a pit, peachy flesh juice dripping down my chin, I’m a thing with sharpened teeth, gnashing at a full name, covert meeting in the bathroom mirror getting used to a tongue speaking something tender I never asked to feel this tender This sore-leg-walk out the door, you laugh my name when I want you to pray it, you tell me you’ve entered your own covert alliance with god, don't say it on my behalf, bury me raw with the dirt fold me in with a sheet and the last of my things Put me down in the mouth of the earth and let the worms eat away my flesh You’re good at that, leaving me and my flesh all meaty, and purple and tenderized from you sun stained lips, they tell me you don't know how to love me as a thing I don't know how to love without calling myself prey Don’t know how to hold you without first stripping you raw Can you keep this between us? Our lives covert? Does it get loud alone in your head, left in a covert soft spot of your brain with the sound of your own screaming self, flesh me out from your memories, scream your throat raw of my name, I cannot use my own skin as a tender for you to love me, I am teaching myself to sit at my own feet and pray Using my own hands to hold myself despite becoming an inconvenient thing God sometimes you leave me as a thing I can’t control, leading me on a covert mission to find myself, and I don't know how to do it without other people, god, praying doesn't seem to be working out for me anymore, the flesh on my hands can’t seem to carry my own tender heart after you let so many people beat it raw God I can't pray a thing out of my head When there’s always a raw blister, an opened up covert conversation, tell him he has me to keep in his back pocket, crumpled up flesh, his favorite legal tender