I am trying to make you clean again

the last man I let see me naked             told me his favorite  color

was brown & that was right after         he kissed me              outside

the gas station on 6th ave             & pressed his palms against mine

until we hit brick & then              every word I spoke between the

car & his bed felt like rusty screws             leaving  my throat &

getting caught             on the back of my tongue  & the thing about

the kind of want      that turns into a rattle             in the lungs  

is that it always starts with our teeth             in each other’s necks

with the collapsing of a room into the moment             my back

smashes into the pillow        

& it ends              

when I wake up & all that’s left of you is under my fingernails                     

& I am left to think about all the ways              my skin collects

the world 

about when I learned what it means  to be holy     in the absence

of any god             the way  my aunt brushed my teeth before church

& washed my hair             like a baptism  

in her kitchen sink            & how she dowsed the too-wrong parts

of me             in consecrated oil           

& even now I accept             that there is an element of destruction

to this cleanliness & the chaos of it              comes not when I crack

open my chest & pour             myself all over the gas station’s

concrete             but when the light finds us        through closed

windows      & illuminates only  the places we’ve touched       &

perfectly unravels the fantasies you’ve built        around my flesh.