If You Skipped One Coffee A Day

Or wine, red that slips wantonly between your lips
like nectar on a flower petal…

If you ignore the stems, the edges of leaves, toxins
that act as a defense mechanism…

If you dug up earth to excavate soil, unearthed
roots, disloyal in their slow

creep towards death. If you gave up men,
complicit in those acts of yearning…

Would you plant the seeds God gave to you?

I think of the kid that jumped, rooftop, Santa
Monica Place Mall.

I’d tell him how a mirror shatters. How we bleed
& bleed until there is nothing left.

Help me to understand why a body poisons itself.
You crave the delicate secret blessings,

slavering over sex. Here is the cake I made for you.
The key to life is in the box in the corner.

Infinite & lonely, like a second life.

Sheree La Puma is a recent cancer survivor who lives in Los Angeles and Popotla, Mexico. Her work has appeared in The Penn Review, Redivider, Sugar House Review, The Maine Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Lascaux Review, Salt Hill Literary Journal, Stand Magazine, Rust + Moth, Mantis, and Catamaran Literary Reader, among others. She earned her M.F.A. in writing from CalArts. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of The Net and three Pushcarts. A reader for the Orange Blossom Review, her latest chapbook, Broken: Do Not Use, is currently available at Main Street Rag. Learn more at shereelapuma.com.