Every bad thing that’s ever happened to me
happened on a Thursday. One minute I’m holding
my fleabag body—pressed into a cheap snuff
and packed away, away from the leathery thing cussing
inside my chest—the next I’m on my hands and knees
in my kinkiest funeral dress, trying to gather myself
into a to-go cup. This isn’t the first time I’ve let myself go.
Once, a pink-nosed girl I loved dared me to sip the water
from a wishing well. I didn’t stop until every wish minnowed
down my throat and I became all starlit and boozy
with the backwash of looted dreams. That Thursday,
all the world’s children found a matronly breast to cry on
and my doctor told me each please had mineralized
into bone. He pressed on my tonic-tongue. Very deadly he said.
Then It’s a quirk of the body. And I guess I don’t know much
about the body, other than I’ll take a mouth,
any mouth
in the dark as coolly as a coin pushed into a slot.

And I know
I know
if I were to just leave this cup of body.
on a car
somebody, somewhere
would take a little sip