brush concrete debris from a fresh-limbed fawn with periwinkle vignette

light pools in the sunken

braided rainbow threads hug her wrists extend to barely budding knuckles

clinging photographs of boy band heartthrobs with sun-bleached corners

overexposed and underdeveloped

bodies bloat with the barrel’s hollow as peeping curves swaddle bullets in soft tissue

this red sputters brighter than the stuff you use to scramble to scrub from your underwear

before bleeding was broadcast

this red splatters thicker than the blotches of magenta stain from bitten-off cherry bums

you dappled onto cheeks full as bellies, plump and nearly bursting with things to say

evaporating in summer magma

did your soles overgrow with enough leather callous to sprint across dried bramble

from clomping around in your mother’s heels? as swiped swatches from her vanity

taught red–cherry and crimson and bloodshed

did you learn your strength jamming against your brother’s elbow before school,

for a fragment of shared bathroom mirror, or the great morning race to the shower

before the flow should numb?

the autopsy finds hints of candied wax tooth-scraped from lips stuck in classroom daydreams

orphaned tube of watermelon-scented chapstick rolls about settler rapture in twenty years

unspent on kisses goodbye

playground children will muse folklore in jump rope rhymes, falls cradled in your cartilage

hear them whisper legends of girls in Gaza, as your ashes awaken myths of pegasus

dead sea grazing