Child, when your father and I fought at night, did you mistake it for lovemaking?

Did I teach those fingers to pluck families apart like flower petals?

(I love you, I love you still.)

Darling, was it the sound of the dead dog’s bones, as your father

dropped them one by one into the bucket that seduced you?

Did it sound too much like your pulse?

Was it the day I drove away from you—

freshly graduated from high school,

2 months premature of your first murder.

Did I put too many states between us?

Did you put your own heart in the freezer

next to the thought of me?

Would Mary be forsaken if Jesus had not grown

to be the son God had intended to father?

If he did not wear a crown of thorns,

but instead, wrapped it around his knuckles?

Will I be forgiven for the sins I did not commit,

but created?

When you were small, I told you:

you can grow up to be anything.

What We Hide From Others

you followed me into the bathroom

where I drunkenly pulled down my pants

and sat on the toilet. you stood at the sink

and commented on my underwear,

not looking long enough to notice the scars

on my thighs. you have never seen me naked

but this does not stop you from calling me

lover. after I flushed, we snorted cocaine

out of a parliament filter and stared

side by side into the mirror, matching

flared nostrils, renovated hearts,

blood down the front of our shirts.

One A.M.

“The destruction of the world is the last,

almost desperate attempt to save myself

from being crushed by it.”

—Erich Fromm

she is the kind of shaken

that makes me feel perfect—

pale and empty like the frames of barns

about to be torn down.

the girl isn’t old.

she bleeds green sapling branches,

ignorant to how cold the winter will be.

lonely in silence, she makes

every blinking eyelash

a collision.

the first day we met,

she kissed me

drunk on wine and gasoline.

I couldn’t taste it then,

but her chest is a hallway.

don’t give her matches;

she will kiss them.

don’t give her sweat;

she will drink it.

left alone, she will shatter your teacups

and ash on your love seats,

sit shotgun as you drive on her guilt.

she will hang up, stare dirty, laugh crazy.

she will wake you,

steal you away from dreams of leaves,

holding her forearm like a paintbrush as the blood

splatters solar systems on our kitchen tile.

she will laugh like the bottom of vodka bottles.

apologize for overshooting 11 stitches.

I wish I was the one with the needle and thread.

I would hem her hands over themselves

so she would know how it felt to be helpless.

Heart Apnea

When he sleeps,

the snoring does not bother me:

the rhythmic growl, gravel shoveled

across the sidewalk of his throat.