Besides a lie / I own nothing.

                        –Liu Xiaobo

Cloud was the name of my gray horse
I collect dollhouses

I stand to inherit an igloo and my mother’s old polar bear collection
I harbor all the melting ice caps in my mouth

Sea lions hide from the polar bears in my cavities
My baby teeth grew in white gold, which is to say yellow

I am a sculptor at heart
I’m big in Singapore

In the third grade I sculpted a life-sized wooly mammoth out of melted down
wedding bands

These days, I make swans from tin foil that once wrapped the cheese sandwiches
mother made, Sisyphus written in mustard

I never loved you

All the polar bears are crying because you are so beautiful and warm
They say it’s killing them

The seals are synchronized swimming again, like sad old ladies
in frilly bathing caps

My grandma nicknamed me Lemonade because I was yellow and ridged and buttery as
popcorn in that yellow sweater

Twelve years of ballet

And my pet sea lion lived to be one hundred and seven 
She never, ever died

No one ever dies