Discretionary Love

Watch me transform a memory. It starts from the lining of my insides (lilac silk) And steam-engines through the grey matter of my brain – 

You didn’t know it yet But I was coming straight for you Running wild, flying blind periwinkle blue jet fuel throwing my hands up to

is small-town ugly. I catalogue as you drive:               one motel. one bar named Trapper’s.        

I once was a domestic,    laboring in others’ homes—    washing, watching.  And once,    at the park,    when the children wouldn’t listen,

When the light doesn’t listen, I trace its ghost across my skin: sunrise thinning like a paper heartbeat. No one teaches the body how to

Thoughts of you roughly grate against each bruised crimson seam that opens bloodily. Pooling globules out of my mind into a soiled, grease-stained pan lined

The camera blinked, remembering only her hands, an outlier in the dataset. He reconstructed her from shreds that fell like snow from the blackened sky,

I’m an English major, okay? So when you say okay and that’s all you say in response to my much longer email about you and

A spark of recognition ran through them as they tried to gauge what was already known. He sat watching her eyes searching the void between

They all said she was playing me like a two-dollar fiddle. But I never figured out if that was supposed to be a compliment I’ll