Discretionary Love

When we were kids an alley separated our houses, you were the new girl; all exotic from the city, your dad didn’t have calluses; called

Small things: not returning a phone call right away, not offering early enough to set tables at the spaghetti feed for the homeless, not filling

The dust settles, a fragile ceasefire in the kitchen light, the air gritty with unsaid apologies, yesterday’s words like shrapnel lodged beneath a skin of

Spread the words On the wings of Aeon Cuddle the skin Aglow with the sun When the tip of the spear Is my kith and

A sound check ignites a flame In a distance of incendiary nights Back and forth the ringing breaks As the dawn announces a new appetite

1. Morning has broken like a child opening the bedroom door. You wear my Red Sox sweatshirt, the one with the ratty collar. My pillow

Almost a year from the last harvest moon when we had to close mami’s house The towel inherited from her linen closet a mix of

I am almost as old as my dad was when he died. How young does that make him? It doesn’t matter – he’s still dead.

Nothing. Not even a look. Maybe a hand raised, to say goodbye. A distance that makes me be someone I hate. What do you do