A List of Things Inside Me

The piece of gum I swallowed five years ago,
Creeping its way down my gullet
In white strands of stickiness.
Toothpaste clumping in a tight ball in my stomach,
No longer smelling of mint but of rot and decay.
The one hundred and sixty-eight spiders,
Eight for every year I’ve been alive,
That slipped into that damp cave of breath,
Scraping themselves on my yellow jagged teeth 
Like a baseball bat against a fence
Until they crawled into my throat,
Hairy legs tickling the insides of that fleshy slide
And settling in the dark.
A hard hot scab of stone stuck to my lungs,
Black and grainy, staining the air 
I breathe with sharp debris.
But look,
Vines of honeysuckle too.
In purples and yellows,
Climbing the hard bones of my ribs,
Swaying like summer dresses
Hung on a clothesline.
And dandelions,
Blowing their tufts
Through the invisible wind in my body,
Landing on the soft skin of my heart like 
Sweet dust.