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

It recommended
soft porn, as gentle prodding and petting parent
to parent might calm and soothe the kid.

you know that
baby swallows make silver ripples
in wild rivers to court reeds?

The storm passes without snow.
The car waits loyally in the back lot.

You are strange, my mother said, dwelling on the past.

You said it was okay to blame
what goes wrong on the planet

Okay, picture this: We’re in an elevator. The elevator shuts down. It doesn’t matter where we’re going, only that we’re alone.

Gravel-scatted hell &
we were blessed to be able
to hold on for even a heartbeat

You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.

Ghosts for hire, whispers in her mouth,
cysts to feel, the symmetry of a gift.

I imagined a cascade of slow death for all / that mattered…

a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.

Even from this distance I could go out
the door it would bang shut and crumble

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.

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

Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.

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

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

I don’t
know why
I’m in the garden
kneeling on dirt