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.

a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.

love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt

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

Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night;
should have boiled old coffee before noon.

Winter sat like a wolf
on the horizon.

Part of being a good sad person
is always painting the shadows
in the right direction and knowing
what sorrow to art with.

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

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

Listen to me: I know
the winter gloom in
mid-summer…

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

I myself should never have been born

I am not a guide
for every traveler
of loss.

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

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

I tap at the alphabet while a single deer
taps at the dirt beyond the brush
on the far side of the tree line.

Even as the sun warms the concrete
the long nights’ sensual cold lingers in my clothes.

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.