Jeffrey Dahmer, or I Like You So Much I Could Eat You

The most startling of all is the quiet and
the fingerprints we leave on the glass.
In the morning, there is snow and thin circles of ice in the shape of my hand.

I think, momentarily, that I could fall in love with him--
he touches the tops of my feet and wants me,
terribly.

There are footprints to the edge of a cliff.
I walk inside of them to leave none of my own. Please, honey,
lick my wind-chapped lips and tell me

not to love him
as violently as I know I can.
The first lover I had bit until blood filled the spaces between each tooth;

the serial killer kills out of fear of
abandonment. He eats a hand and then an arm.
About the victim, he says, If I could have kept him longer, all of him,

I would have.
I drink warm tea and miss
each of his fingertips individually. I want to dunk them in milk.

Under the porch, a praying mantis kills her mate.
If the phone rings, I don't hear it.
I touch my fingertips and pretend one hand,

the left hand, belongs to him. There is no name for this.
Let's call it cannibalistic tenderness. Let's call it
what it is:

ILikeYouSoMuchICouldEatYou.
Apartment 213 is raided. Police discover
a skull in the closet, elbows in the icebox.

The pelican eats her young,
maybe. Women everywhere describe a desire
to chew on their infants.

The serial killer is up to a new man a week.
My feet fall off the bed. In the morning
my toes are frostbite cold.

He refuses to cut them off and I like him less for it.
We woke up in the dark and he overstayed his welcome, but
still I want him closer.

Like, move in next door closer and
tear down the wall between our kitchens closer.
The praying mantis has great regret for her actions--

I know this. The serial killer says I wanted him to stay with me so
I strangled him, he says, I still have guilt, he says, Please try to
understand. I'm sorry, sir, but if I understand,

I will not admit it.
The police discover a body in the valley beneath
a cliff. Inside her smiling mouth,

a third lip, the sharp tip of a tongue.
I walk back home and the ice under my shoes crunches
like the smallest of bones.