tenderness pulled at my lips.
but i have never been a garden,
i have never been a paradise.
a similar landscape, i'll admit.
but i’m an entirely different temperament.  

my pulse bucked and shot freckles into the earth.
pleasure oozed like plump bubbles of cherries and watermelons underfoot.  

i was a 4 AM girl, leg splayed, on display.
a strangled patience feigned love.
i kept kisses rolled inside my navel.

but i wanted my own compulsive decisions to spill out across the carpet, beloved and swollen, snaked around me, becoming sound.  i wanted lilac crests and ruby bays, for my secrets to settle like smoke in the sand.  i wanted a mid-century future, a porch swing, pink tea cups, and peonies.

fried remanence hardened into marble
and black ink followed in its absence.

i lifted words from the pale sites of teeth marks.
i swept seeds from my scars to fill every dark hole in history. 

Jaisha Jansena is a writer and multimedia artist from Cincinnati, Ohio. She is an Academy of American Poets College Prizewinner. Find their work at jaishajansena.com.