Emma Bleker

The opposite of butterflies
is the hive, dead in your stomach.

I talk and talk when I know my
tongue is beginning to fall out.

I know your heart can
get messy sometimes. I know,
because mine can, too.

Loving yourself has nothing to do
with vanity.

When you ask those who have not
heard it terse, or bubbling,
his voice is god honey and an absence
of sharp tools.

Tell me, with your eyes open
and lips undone of her name,
that breathing is not
missing her

My love has
sometimes looked
like a broken-open jaw.
It has the swing of something
that wishes to tell you
where your feet stand

Trials like these never stopped,
only became more quietly
executed,
killed their witches
differently.

I wonder if we are
taught to become more
like the silences between
sentences as we get
older.

I do not need saving or fixing,
I own sewing kits and was
raised by a woman with
fingertips rough like thimbles

Their name will slide its way into your mouth as you are falling over the edge of some lonely pleasure.

If it comes for you with
open mouth,
with sharpened teeth,
with tongue reaching-
it is coming to devour.
Do not make it into something
beautiful.

I met you in pieces;
you did not save me,
and I did not ask
you to.

There was just
a dead girl crawling into
their bed, calling their name.

“Do you imagine when you are alone that soft things have empty voices?”