I want a room with nooks and crannies

and secrets that have left cracks in the

wall. Give me a ghost girl’s attic.

Leave me sleeping and hopeful in

the basement of a boy who touches women

the way he touches flower petals. Gift

me with battles in bed but don’t let

there be a view of wars from my window.

There are sheep in wolves’ clothing in

my closet and I’ve got skeletons

ballroom dancing in the lamplight.

When you come here,

you must leave your heart on my pillow, I

promise I won’t be angry about the bloodstain

that love leaves. I hope dearly that your

pretty spirit haunts my bedroom when you’re

not there. Put a bit of my soul in your perfume

bottles so You can smell like my dreams and we’ll

fuck on the lace You’ll wear to your wedding where the

groom is not me and I am but a wishful dream. I

need a room where

“Hades & Persephone 4ever”

are scratched into the floorboards with a tetanus nail and I

want this to be the room where the dolls remove

their tulle gowns for teddy bears. Where we cut our lips

on crescent moons and too many c,o,m,m,a,s,.

The walls will be painted scarlet fever, the

rug will be stained with witches brew and

my diary will have bite marks on every other page.

Here we’ll put the marble bust of your post-me heart.

This is where the X-ray of my broken wrist will hang.

This is where the painting of the mermaid who called

herself my mother will stay and this is where I place my

silver locket caskets on the bedside table within easy reach.

We’re going to

make art and make love and mostly make

the windowpanes rattle like the snakes I nightmare.

This is the room where you find yourself

half haunted, half headache

wholly cliche macabre. This is the room where

monsters flirt, where God comes to party,

where Lucifer lectures Lolita on love and this

is the room

we make make make