# Buying Chalk for Making Milk
**by Violet Treadwell Hull**

Sand of purple powdered milk
Salt water teeth
Maple butter tongue
All moves against me from time to time

And the obsidian ocean will lick your heels
So crouch low low down
Find the bloodied finger
And the boat shoes I chewed

I know that each candle took you farther from Healdsburg
It burns now
That place
And it has nothing to do with you

Not even if I wanted it to
It burns at both ends and you burn at one
Quick and to the target
Locked and lobbied

A square neck line
And the wet cloth
Is a stealth beast
Dissolving away at your filament

Nothing isn’t a memory now
Your face looks
My face focuses
Our eyes crinkle into one telescope

Another spine finds itself
Melts
And welds
A foul splashback to seal the fateful deal

I love that window in that house in my head
Could you ever wait by it
With shoes soaked through
Times twenty

A hot cup of tar
Married to a sweet caramel key
Cuts the rewound timeline
And soothes down all the other more bitter things

I had landed into your time
Now I crawl my way back
But hands chase
And the sick never leaves me

Relearning this shell like a new formula
Always known the face in my knees
But bulbs burn if socks scratch now
And I'd never let you inside if I couldn't see you

This butcher paper sketch skeleton of me misses rolling in the hay
I cannot forget our tempo
And I’m sure that grease looks fine
To eat and to love

Since we’ve gone
Movement is better when the brain goes quiet
But this depository still ruminates on that red tile
Bathroom house and yard New Mexico

Come for the heat and sweat and stay for the steam
I’ll be reluctant to talk about our family
But please make me swollen like my moms
It might take a baster or a test tube or a spatula but we’ve cooked before