These are my eyes,

but mama calls them her chocolate moons,

brushing low

when the sweet murmurs slowly sink them

in sticky ink.

They look more like two slits

in peeling onion cadavers

to me, and on paper

they are a pair of

ugly brown peas.

This is my nose

that sister dented

after I slipped out of her fingers,

like a hot, buttery roll,

and hollered for two days straight.

Or at least that’s what mama said

when she tried fixing it,

squeezing and bending and twisting

until it was dented and splotchy.

These are my lips,

two thick and rubbery garden snakes

wriggling between hothouse roses

blooming on my cheeks.

I trace my finger

along their crackling curves –

plump and ripe on the bottom,  

then smooth and silky.

They’re magnets vibrating,  

gaping and puckering in attraction
and repulsion.

I wonder why God made lips like these.

He must think about kissing.

Beyond this glass there are brown peas
and blue pools

and green gems and gray storms,

and noses that curve this way and that way,

and lips that crush together like gentle
snowflakes.

These are your eyes, these are my eyes,

and together this is the world.