I need you the way venom needs a wound

to enter the body and render
the recipient stunned—to die twice

pierced by the sting of that love
letter’s savage chemistry—demanding

surrender so absolute it no longer
permits breath: ruthless and cruelly

molecular. My mouth deadly on yours.

To seduce me

Tell me what you’ll do as the world ends. Tell me I’m on your list of regrets. Exhale so I can feel your breath settle on my skin like a wayward prayer. Point out the hummingbird nest in the lilacs. Describe your first kiss, then your last. Ask me how I got this scar. Bring me a handful of spent petals you stole from a hurricane. Drink this elixir and don’t ask questions. Wake me as sunrise stains the low sky like the spirit streaming through a cathedral. Kneel and light a votive in the grotto with my name in your mouth. Snuff out the match between your fingers. Bless me with the ashes. Peel an orange before I can ask. Name each phase of the moon. Peel an orange before I know I want an orange. Convert to the religion of our existence under the clearest night sky pricked with the burned-out love letters of a trillion dying stars. Peel an orange and let me watch. Let me watch you. Ask me if I saw the moon last night. Ask me if I’m still hungry. Look at me. Tell me I taste like oranges. Tell me I taste like the moon. Tell me I’m your holy communion. Promise to haunt me. Tell me I taste like hunger. Look at me as the world ends. Say all of this reminds me of you.

Jennifer Molnar the author of the chapbook Occam's Razor, and her work has appeared in New South, Hawai'i Review, So to Speak, Best New Poets, Duende, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from George Mason University and resides in New York.