consider
the movement of the lip.
the way it lingers,
hinged to the jawbone,
pink,
heavy against the chin,
slender
as it is slit into a stretched ‘m,’
how it curls
into a slice of watermelon,
all red wet, all let me get
another slice of that nigga,
a flit lick across the gums –
fastened tongue and waiting,
                  remember when slavery
was a thing: hook-lipped and screams,
how it rewinds itself when
back flesh fissure
furrow from shoulder
blade to waistline,
god splashed on the tip,
releasing air,
misshapen as it exhales.

there’s something to be said about – how the ruin in your lips are rosewood: how the color of his hands are cherry: how your hands are a ribbon of veins making the wrist: how your fingers churn when he is inside you: how your palm mottles: how your nails chip the neck of his shoulder. it’s natural – the making of wood – the smell of decay: how his head lumbers under pressure: how the scale of the spine makes you assume the vertebrae is ash; a brown or pale, a straight grain, curly – how he is able to mold you into figurine: how your hips whine and whither. you tell him to work slowly as he saws at the small of your back – how his cherry hands splinter your waistline into thirds: how he frames your ribs: how he likes to see the scorn in your face; in the way the body finishes – how flesh consumes blood: how bone carves through the skin: how he is able to veneer what is left of your body: how your body shrinks into a petal of dust.