our existence was determined by the way our fingerprints fit together.
we jumped till we were so dizzy that our names blended into each other,
or maybe we didn’t have names at all.
we were immortal merry children,
berry pickers who’d escaped by
sliding into fragments of she
and garlands of bad luck,
becoming intertwined with the roots
of your hair and i kept using plurals but you started untangling you from i.
we were covered in berry stains and that’s when you told me
you wanted to spend the rest of your life curious
about veins and boundaries and
blossoming girlhood,
turning into women, weaving ourselves into anything
we thought our bodies could make us.
when the sun burned through our eyes, we would
bring out our old stereo that played music without us asking it to
and hide beneath the thorns where
you crushed bugs,
shattering their fragile bodies because
you could be powerful
and i laughed, otherwise i would have to think
of killing,
so i licked berries and grinned with purple teeth.
i think we will last forever like this but i wonder
if you agree because i see your hands tucking stains into your pocket for later
like there’s an anything except a now.
i sang lullabies and was the only one to fall asleep, or maybe we both did
and i was the only one to wake up.
either way,
i don’t eat berries anymore.
it feels like i’m lying
to say i’m anything.
forever rotted from the inside out,
so i hand out self like it still means something if it’s not stained
with berries and smiles and you.
