While You Were Away

and sometimes I got cozy in a cold shower, afraid
of the air outside waiting to wrap around wet skin. And after,
I’d leave the lights on each night. You weren’t home,

and I would think, safe is a pretty term, a feeling to dream.

She Has Notifications Silenced

One purple crescent
sent into sky
where my blue cloud
wafts above, alone,
aware it’s been seen
yet lingers to be heard.

Do Not Resuscitate

Nurses and doctors in hospices reported the terminally ill just suddenly feeling better. Emergency rooms had no more casualties. Heart attacks, car accidents, anything. They still happened, but everyone survived.

Jaguar, but Pronounce the “U”

How could we be so different than a velociraptor
if not even worse
eating our savior
stop
don’t think of it that way.

To Know Everything (on the Camino de Santiago): A Story of Connection

We sit quietly, the stone wall cool, the chapel shadow leaning left in front of us. We eat around the dark bruises in the white flesh. You take the pit out of your nectarine and place it between us, like an offering to the God we mock.

Ode to Boy in Nightclub

All I want is to keep you,
but you are still on the dance floor
and New York City feels like coming down.

An ephemeral march between

pitch black

and too much morning.

Redheaded Angel

I stare at the message. It says: Doofus Howser just walked in…
In my hyper-focused, hypervigilant state, this antithetical autocorrect strikes me as hilariously funny.

The Duality of Homes

My mother throws the casserole in the oven after adding expiring ingredients and vegetables to the beat of raucous drums playing in the background. When the casserole finishes cooking, we all grab plates and serve ourselves. Sitting in the living room with the television playing a crude adult animated series, we eat.

Boardwalk Soda Fountain Shop

I watched as you’d extend a palm beneath
A ripe banana, tenderly, as if
To ask permission. Or you’d let me tuck
Wildflowers into cleavage held aloft,
Slick, sweaty, suntan oiled, flecked with sand crumbs.

Trickle Back, Sad Sack

Rae was a gray woman, then. Shadow-self. Seldom-felt. Gray night, gray sight. Out the window now she imagines the clouds form a window. A door. She could walk through it if she believed there was anything on the other side.

Raised by Wolves

I shiver, understand as always
my teeth rotted and dull.
Even my father, that son of a bitch,
kept his bite until the end.
I was always ignored
last to marrow
flitching bits from
other’s old kills.

After the Relapse

I will never know the zaftig bosom of a mother during a fever, incessant nag, the body swap, the unconditional love. We both lacked what we both lacked—both pulled into a whirlpool, a tornado, while everyone stood by and laughed or rubbernecked. Up ahead the cars will slow down for an accident. The firetruck, coppers, tow truck will spin lights. Perhaps help is only a call away.

Avocados

The blade presses against the first, and the insides give way before the leather skin does. Same with the other two. My throat constricts. Shaking, I drop the knife onto the counter, pick up the avocados and press them between my hands, a non-bright green mush oozing from between my fingers, shedding their suits and seeds in my fists. You were in remission.

French Impressionists

I’ll plunge into the Loing or the Seine itself,
into ultramarine and cobalt blue
I’ll wade into the waters of Giverny,
lie amongst the water lilies
madder red and cadmium yellow against emerald,
violet waters

No Reason to Get Up but Get Up

hallowed and hollowed, richly bred for pain—
Anne and Sylvia shared a New York taxi in the rain,
discussed therapy and where they’d left their latest
lipstick stains.

Scene(s) from a Chain Restaurant in Papillion, Nebraska

I’d balance my feelings when openly flirting with the girl I’d pined after my entire junior year, while secretly hoping the hot male lifeguard I worked with would show up and notice me, catching adrenaline as I negotiated who I was in public with what I longed for in private.

Seeing It

stacking boxes again
this realization the burning
bush this moment this you me

The Ritual of Killing the Crab

I watched as bubbles rose form the submerged fruit, spilling out in columns. She tore the thing apart with her fingers, familiar and soft to me, and the cracking red skin echoed in our chipped kitchen.

I Lied When I Said That I Missed You

and yes, I love this life that I have
built, slow mornings and love that keeps
me warm, but a thrum beneath my
breastbone may always sing
for the chaos that I learned to call
home, for that eternal yearning
for something, anything to burn

She Wolfs

She waves to them, smiles even in her sleep,
never learned to cook, lost her hair in
menopause, uses a cane for mushroom
hunting even when on wet days the tip
sinks in with the weight of her limp till she’s
bound to fall on the soft ground, lying in
wet leaves and giggling like a girl.