your voice makes me want
to crumple like a paper thin
plastic doll,
spitting out the guts
in my kidneys
and the acid in my tongue,

but it is too sweet,
like the ways the evil queen tricked
snow white to bite into a juicy red apple,
firm, and steady, and merciless altogether

raw,
like unseasoned garnish
filling the stomachs of the gods of olympus themselves
when ambrosia becomes too unrefined
for their tastes

subdued,
like 2 am or when the witching hour strikes
and everyone is reduced to a fumbling
mess on their beds,

thoughtful,
like love letters to someone the dead
or just someone that takes your poetry
so seriously
that they let their life lie on a line

and dead,
like the graves in which I learn how to
pray and sing my eulogies