I keep the moments coins in a piggy bank but I love the rain, so I’ll save them for sunny days when the shadows and trees all look the same and I’m trudging uphill to get to my next class, hours drifting past like sluggish clouds his smiles are pennies—the heads-up kind the ones he […]
Nineteen
I became aware of a pain / festering somewhere within me / he felt my body shiver / squeezed me against his heartbeat / until I fell back asleep / dreamed of all the bugs / exploding guts on car windshields / short lived and irrelevant / where do they go after that high-impact? / […]
“one of our own,” he said over and over
Because I love her hands clasped, compressions on his chest counting to thirty under my breath as my partner cut through the fabric of his buttoned shirt thirteen year old told me last week “I want to die every single day!” and I thought immediately, I want to die every other day life is […]
Because I Could Not Explain Grief In Symbols
Yesterday was three years ago, passing broken bodies of deer on the sides of every road. Their white bellies, slender, bent necks. I thought of her. Every black-eyed doe was the crack of her forehead on the steering wheel. Every dun-colored body was the bruises they say marked her face, kisses from impact. Passing their […]
Bouquets of Roses
you told me once, your favorite flower: lily, any variety, they are all so pretty or so you said, leading me through darkness to your bed I followed, oh so willing to be your reality you lean in to kiss me and suddenly, the presence of others is suffocating figures of shadow-others crowding, mourners at […]
F_ll_ng _n L_v_
I got drunk on the Thornapple River with friends and colleagues she asked if I was okay so I leaned sideways and dunked my face in the riverbed, I glimpsed his delicate eyes through murky darkness, two glowing lights with the force of his lips, he pushed me upright I breathed the summer air but […]
After
There was a warning on the radio this morning. Stay away. Stay alive. The announcer said it twice. And maybe she meant fallen electrical wires, but my thoughts wandered to you. Keep your distance, at least twenty-five feet, she said. Contact with live wires causes death. Stay away. Stay alive. But I drove to your […]
