Melt the gold between your palms
and smear it on everything you love:
your hips, your lips, the soles of your feet.
This month I am sick of sand and sun and callouses;
in my dreams I am new skin, tender and thin.
The fluttering of my heartbeat rises in every place
my angles meet, and anyone could see
how desperate they blush to be touched.
A fist I took once to make me ice
has instead made me fire, reduced cinder,
liquid in the rains, the shade of dried blood.
I bite the open hand, climb the fence instead of going though,
lie on my back and close my eyes to imagine it differently.
I cannot be made into granite no matter how long I stand still;
the bees and blooms crawl up my knees and drape me in honey
too heavy to bear, too sweet to eat.
Melt the gold between your fingers
and press it to everything you hate:
the curve of your stomach, the length of your throat,
the lines time has carved onto your face.
I breathe in black and blue until the bruises bloom and then wilt,
the fat sunrise rests its face against the ocean, tired too,
in a better world the dawn remakes me, new.
A.M. Kennedy is a writer and painter from Tampa. She specializes in precariously stacking books and half-finished tea mugs. She has been previously published in 3Elements Review,Popshot Magazine, and The Burningword.