She smells of turmeric and lemon
She only eats clean
Her lips are glossy with the stain of bone broth: the spill of her other lovers who sprout from hair and bone
There’s no place in those flat lips
for dark meat
They curl around and constrict around what she wants
I try to force myself against those teeth, that whiteness
And at night in the blackness she teaches me new ways to be and opens the pit in her chest for women to fall out
They are women the white of ivory, of porcelain, of the burning blank-tasting milk I was spoon fed, the white of the screen I looked at in the blue dark when I looked at them
She won’t put her fingers in my mouth
It’s prurient to watch the pads run over them – her perfect women
and wind all the way back to where I started
I know what it is to be outside, the out belongs to me
The outer banks of anywhere
When she’s gone, I scrape orange peels with my teeth to understand and that’s more waxy whiteness to swallow