Kristen Orser

Dear stomach,

Early I thought I—a flower on my tongue.  I found all the letters and it's really the emotional center: A boy who doesn't know my name. 

I stay in bed—six hundred hours in the body.  Like an empty house where I sometimes sleep with the lights on.  Folded arms, I would love to go with you—                 But parenthesis bear the weight of my inability to say what I want to say. 

                        When I leave the clause I become mischievous—I fall asleep on your couch.

The sentences keep running into each other: This is another kind of blindness: I can't look myself in the eyes because of positioning inside the self and, also, because of shame. 

                                    The entire verbal system is a murmur:  Go burn and quit the womb. 

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