1. I don’t want to be begged. I am turned on by a steady affection, an unwavering rationality. I want you to do my taxes please memorize my social security number darling.

2. Be careful be careful be careful I am sharp in unexpected places I will remember your mother’s name and kiss your earlobe and drizzle fingers down your spine but I will also spit poison in your mouth, set fire to your childhood. I will erase you from my mind, snubbed out like a match in the wind but I will still sometimes send you pretty pictures of me and smile at the thought of you wondering why, furrowing a brow and remembering the night I told you you were special. did my eyes shimmer with sarcasm then? did my lips taste like spite?

3. I want to be touched oh do I want to be touched I will curl beneath your fingers, arch and writhe like burning twigs deep in the embers I will shrink beneath you I will let myself revel in feeling small if only for a moment. I will construct castles on your skin for touching me like that, for a moment I will see you like a world unto itself for a moment with your fingers on my stomach you will be invincible.

4. I am more in love with myself than I am with you. I want to hear myself gasp I want you to keep noise to a minimum.

5. I am not smooth. I have a scar on my knee from the time I fell down the stairs to impress my father I have a scar on my back from the time my skin tried to kill me and had to be cut out (did it scream? make a last ditch attempt?) I have a scar on my lip from something that must have been stressful I have a scar I have a scar I have a scar… I have stretch marks on my thighs from when they grew thick like tree trunks to keep me up and fuzz running down my stomach reminding me that I am warm blooded. I have freckles and divots, dents and bruises, I am not smooth but I am warm and sometimes I can feel like home.

I am more in love with myself than I am with you. I want to hear myself gasp I want you to keep noise to a minimum.

6. I am like a newborn baby feeling with my mouth if you don’t stop me I may swallow you whole tasting, tasting, tasting. I like when you taste like human, salty with nervousness and desire.

7. I am not meek I am not timid I will push you down I will bite you and bruise you and you will only be allowed to cradle me, delicate, delicate.

8. I need you to want me or I am not interested. I need you coiled up under your skin like a cobra on the attack I need your fingers itching, twitching for the curve of my hips I need you to feel like your chest is swelling, like your lips will whither up and die if they don’t land on my skin. I need your eyes heavy, heavy, heavy with want I need you gravitating towards me. Then I will look at you.

9. Inside I am softer. Inside I am poems and heavy summer rain and the time I tried to rescue a baby bird who fell from a tree outside my dirty brownstone in Brooklyn. If you are good enough you can see a little of that. If you are sweet enough you can swing open the doors. If you are broken enough I will cup you in my hands like that little bird and bring you inside and try to feed you mashed up fruit maybe this time I won’t end up burying you in my tiny backyard under fake grass with a styrofoam headstone, “lightening, taken from us too soon.”

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Lily Cigale is a freshman at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Originally from Westchester, New York, she runs a fairly popular blog on tumblr.