Medium rare

When I say I love you,
You think of something big
Dont you know that I can fit these words
In the gab between my teeth?
Because my love is air that you find in the bubbles of your champaign,
One drink down and I am no more,
One drink down and I am flirting with the bartender
another drink down, I am riding in a cab explaining to the driver
that this was my first drink.

I tell him I loved a man for 6 months
and for the first time
I learned that he keeps all of his love in his wallet,
flashes a hundred rand note for my smile;
He wants to buy me something
I already sold to myself for free.
When I finally get home,
My mother will confuse the smell of alcohol in my mouth
for kisses
because some times men smell like hangover.
I tell her no man has touched me,
that I dissappear when love calls my name,
it feels like death, throwing yourself at a shadow that has no face.
She will show me the seeds in the growing grims of her nails,
crystal stones that she collected from the sweat of men.
Next to the tomatoe garden in our backyard,
My mama is growing men,
she is growing a son,
she is growing the man my father should be when he returns.
We have adam's apples for breakfast, lunch, and supper
and from each meal we get a rib,
to build a broken woman back up.