Beyond the pale, the pallor
and slow-burn violet death:
the burrowing spiders,
backs the size of satellites,
orbiting your hair

a halo webbed and weaving
and electric bright
with roots of neon to spear inside
that soft spot under your ribs

they’ll tickle and preen,
tickle and preen

and yes I crushed a fistful of
mushrooms between my teeth
and lay on my bed
for six straight hours
stuck under this dark belly

looking up at legs gathered
together like popsicle sticks
hot-glued and holding
and her blood winding
its way through us like kudzu
looms into the flaked-rust hulls
of truck cabs that lay buried, lost,
their ghosts suspended in trees

my fingertips were all balsa and
my heart a dull, flat flame

I pressed the backs of spoons on the
hot eggs of my closed eyes,
I poured guava juice into the
pit of my throat

she smelled the sweet and reached
one long leg inside—
the curved hook at the end
pointing like a ballerina in flight

[Editor’s Note: Publication of this poem was made possible by a gift from Lisa Nohealani Morton during our annual Kickstarter.]