Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time

love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt

I buy too much, for someone of my stature.
could pawn a skinny metaphor to purchase a plump skin.
its reputed in our lineage— to daydream a life that shreds our pockets.

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

Do not say anything anybody else has said ever. Things are not “bleached by sun.”

Now that the Israeli has left, it falls
on me to make the salad.

you quit wearing pants
loaf around your yard
in hole-nipped panties

the strands of your hair on the bathroom tiles aren’t sketching defeat. that’s you spitting disease in the face with another day you’ve woken up to.

He has stories that I am not in
anymore. It’s healed this way.

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

Every so often, they add a tattoo
in honor of some long-forgotten love.

I would always rather be happy than
dignified. Rather held than held
in awe.

Winter sat like a wolf
on the horizon.

Empty vessels
make the most sound, I think,
as you rip the fairy lights off the handrail.

Lights on the dashboard spell out
“You still can’t kiss me”

I like to think I’m also sprung,
released from the furnace knocks,
done with the heavy meat stews
and salty soups.

and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud