Discretionary Love

Do all this grit your teeth, grin and bear it. I think I’ll go long for hope, that slippery non-object. God is not dead and

That cardigan hugs you warm— itching. When you pull it tighter, you smell his childhood fears: alabaster, faint, trembling. Your body was even last week,

If you love widely enough, you will notice others finding it foul as if their singular love were diminished, the woman reading a novel on

Night-flesh, clear-borne, where the wounded jut of dusk’s clavicle and the holiness of your folded thigh on a manifest of dew are enough. Evenings should

I’m lying on you after intimacy. The sweat draws our flesh together like honeyed bread and sticky fingers. The familiarity of you feels so safe.

Remember those South Carolina summer nights?              Piazza of haint blue, julep highballs mint green Hydrangeas dusk pink, magnolias lunar

I found you where the birch trees lean, their white bark peeling like quiet secrets, soft against the hush of early morning. The wind moved

The hourglass sand is endless with the way you flip me over. I don’t want a happy ending because I never want an ending, so

Ellipses note silences in reported speech. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . . the most famous. They indicate an