First published by Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight
EATING AT ME
In the kitchen, our middle names etched out
on slices of sandwich bread, sourdough and
that sour face you make at me in the
rear-view mirror, one lonely green bicycle
watching me from the back of someone
else’s Subaru, or me tugging at mom’s
sleeve in the grocery store, her arms
growing bonier each year until I stop
tugging at her sleeve altogether because I
worry the tanned flesh of her forearm will
slip effortlessly off the bone, like some
overcooked chicken left too long in the pot
or the rabbits that year in muggy New
Orleans, that woke up halfway through my
oldest cousin skinning them, and so I don’t
look at rabbits and I don’t eat chicken,
falling off the bone or otherwise, and when I
draw lines in the sand I do it with my big toe
and I only worry a little bit about the skin
falling off.
SELF-PORTRAIT
Dark-haired, dark-eyed, watching
yellow lines cleave the road
into halves, counting
onetwothree…onetwothree…
onetwothree… counting down
the curve of your elbow, while
Lou Reed croons over the
sound of me watching you watch
me, knuckles white on the
steering wheel while I
think about which lines
are worth crossing.
SHARDS OF GLASS AND ALL THE PEOPLE THAT HOLD THEM
On your last night of being fourteen,
on the floor of some dirty bathroom, finding out
about electricity–
Smash the lightbulb with an
open palm the room goes black,
the room goes hollow, room goes infinite,
lock the door he kicks it down, gravity works like this–
One two three sets of hands on you and you lose
your precious glass fragments, you lose your footing,
you lose next week,
memory works like this–
I’m sorryI’m sorryI’m sorry
Is what you said
right after.