To Love Like a Human

you don’t buy the orange dress,
you count money in your head,
perfect to the decimal,
you want to buy sea just for an hour,
a boy with a buzz cut,
ride in the night after 10pm,
steal his dogs,
run along the rough edges of this country,
roll in the mud, the sea,
and listen to the shells.
his hand grips cold against your waist.
you avoid his mouth
to swallow the salt from his skin,
decimal perfect in your head.

wear another hand-me-down dress,
too small for your flesh,
because your sister, she falls out of love fast.
soon she’ll see orange is not her color.
and don’t forget your first dog wasn’t orange,
it was jet black.
everyone told you it was fake
because it had white star fur on its chest.
Bravo! you remember his name.
he would have died the same year hazel did,
had I known love doesn’t cure diseases,
but a responsible adult does.
so that year you pulled out another black dog
from the hands of death god,
only to sell it when you couldn’t feed it no more.
same year you found God
is dog if you read it from the end.
now you never love anyone
like you love a dog.
you are scared they’ll die like one,
so, you love everyone like human
and carry a heart full of diseases.

the last time you checked the market,
the cost of the sea was
as much as the sky.
you crave metallic taste when you bite the boy’s ear,
but remember last summer when a married man drowned you into the pool
so, he could tell the story in the lunch break,
how he saved you,
or when his hands full of fuchsia powder
suffocated your face, and how weak your arms were,
but they still pushed him away.
first time you played the festival
was the last time you loved to watch.
worse was, you despised men
because you were no longer fun.
and your brother warned you,
“All men are dogs,”
and you’d bend enough to make him one.
but he calls you a goddess.
for once you want to touch the temple
after years of condemning the devotees.
the faith resides in your heart,
but you stopped praying as a child.

you live like a pearl in a seashell,
wait until your luster can get you sold.
and you hear the sea, and taste it
in the night, after ten,
from a temple that’s running
on the faith of this one worshipper.
wait till you learn how pearls are made.
you aren’t rare, you are human-made.
so, roll in the mud, the sea, and listen to the shells.
avoid his mouth at all costs
because the sun behind him is the same
color as your new dress.
the boy would grow his hair back
and lose his piercings.
but before you bend your knee for another prayer,
don’t listen to the bark of a dog at a distance.
don’t flinch at his touch.
don’t count all the money in your head.
fractions of everything you are
is decimal perfect in your head.
round it off
and spill the rest in the sea.