Somewhere out there, there is a version of myself that never knew your carefully placed wrath, never felt the sting of your vodka filled hands, or the spine tingling chill of your words.

Just a remnant of those herded onto ships months ago, we have been divided, have been examined and bargained for but not yet fed.

I used to think nature was innocent. Now I think nature wants to live at all costs.

I watch as men in uniform hand his wife an American flag. “That should be my mother’s,” I whisper to myself.

I tried to tailor the tattered tapestry of your arcane inner thoughts, lace-up a labyrinth of lament with love, and silently suture a sanguine sackcloth of self-immolation

In my dreams, you are still flying across the face of the sun.

how happy we were to sleep together, before insomnia and joints that can’t find comfort, before snoring and restless legs

I’m a prisoner in my own flesh. My consciousness is the warden, the people around me become the inmates of my creation

I’ve never felt so damn fragile since you chose to leave. Haunted and yet somehow fascinated. Knowing now exactly what ‘Found in a vehicle’ amounts to.

Sometimes, I think to be me is to be full of empty places. To fill a table with everyone who once loved me, then stopped.

the german’s heart. the local stoner’s heart. derek’s heart. so so many hearts. all stolen and trashed like fast food wrappers out a speeding car window. where are the keys to lock me up?

or times when my sister would pretend we were french for who in their right mind wouldn’t want to be more neapolitan than the chocolate bottom on a triple-layer ice-cream stack

It flips the pages until my cowering shadow bends and shifts in a slow motion cartoon moving from month to month until I am left in a knotted mess of sheets, missed calls and black out curtains.

Mother, I am wasting your life and want to give it back to you, but I’m not sure how.

12. “The Only Thing,” by Sufjan Stevens - Do I care if I survive this burying of the dead? Should I tear my eyes out before I see too much? I can’t save you from sorrow.

Other dogs lope by, don’t hear barks from my house. I donated unused vet pills. The leash coils in a drawer. My hurt feels like howling.

But we made sure her flowers were safe that we / Tucked them under our chests til the house harbored / Their limbs that we’d never let the ice pelt them that / Her flowers had tasted the cool rain but no more

America. We. Love. You. So. Much. / land of the free and home of the grave / Where an issue of Kleenex Monthly / and flowers / are delivered every / National Disability Independence Day / by motorcade / in stacked cartons / labelled only “THE LONELY”

your mudtropic soul still drawn / just as the boy of you imagined / never to resist not under glaring sun nor beneath / the halo of the moon / rolling with that sister down an embankment / into a ditchful of daylilies

There’s a chance the glue won’t hold, but it doesn’t mean it’s worthless. Instead, we can rebuild. We’ll change it into a shape we’ve never seen, and maybe we’ll come to love it far more than what it once was.