Who crave warmth against all apathy
share crimson journeys through tunneled
barricades leading to the upper left corner
of my sheeted cheek. I swell when they visit,
I turn soup into hard butter for them, ask them
to accede, their seedlings will be enough.
Never really hatching, only becoming more
and more daughters, they all have the same name.
The daughters, like leaves we rack into gutters and 
side street sewers. We forget the daughter’s name, 
something after a flower or the hard scaly
underside of their sanded feet. The night we threw
out the mattress there were fireflies in the alleyway
and I hoped our daughters wouldn’t need
us anymore. I wanted them no longer to
desire my mouth my feverishly sick desire for
someone who isn’t mine to beg. These daughters
taught me how to hide all that ugly under
zippered mattresses. You unzipped
me, we crawled in, finally daughterless.
Were these daughters pieces of us that we 
left in the sheets, who came back to 
eat their way into our spines?
You smiled, and told me there would one
day be more daughters, more to eat and more
to be eaten.