remembering parties thrown for a future that could

never be. A future that language couldn’t have

accommodated.

Nowadays I don’t know what to do with my hands.

I write. I say your name over and over

until it isn’t a word. I sit outside and weep

into the daisies until memory becomes less of a

burden

and more of a fact. At the end of the day you are still

gone and I am still a storyteller, sitting on a chair

you will never touch, staring into an abyss

that remains silent despite the hole I have torn into it

with my suffering. Accompanied only by the blue

jays, and their songs like tender mourning.

FIELD NOTES

ok, so here’s what i know. i have to keep talking

because the silence is underwhelming.

i feel like a busy intersection of

green stop signs.

sometimes the only place i can bear to leave us

is at the beginning.

BELATED QUESTIONS

there are at least a million ways to set fire to

something but only one good way to put it out. so

maybe i smothered us. can you forgive me for wanting

this so badly that i ruined the couch cushions? i used

to daydream about running into you in public, because

i needed you to see how much better i was doing but,

looking back, maybe i just wanted assurance that

you’re still alive. how do i talk about all of that

without making it seem like i’m still obsessed with

you? is it healthy to care, distantly, and with no stake

in the situation, for the person i knew you were going

to be? in any burning building there are at least two

exits but when everything’s red how are you supposed

to read the signs? i’m asking too many questions

again, i know. this doesn’t seem like my story to tell

anymore but what was this situation if it wasn’t mine?

even now, there are veins of you stretching away from

my own. memories i don’t want to bury because of the

person i would kill in the process. she was so eager,

unafraid of what love could do to her. what it did. if i

could give you one last thing it would be this: i no

longer think of you with yearning, only curiosity.

NEW VOICEMAIL
9:02 AM
22 SECONDS

The wet dog of desire jumps into my bed and I let it.

I’ll sleep next to anything if it means I won’t be alone.

WHERE MY GRANDMOTHER HIDES

I find her at the bottom of every glass I drink from.

It’s always the same — I’ll tip my head back for one

final, blissful gulp, and then find her staring back at

me from the emptiness. She is as I remember her;

alive. Curly dyed-blonde hair rustles around flushed

skin as I adjust the cup for a better look. An avalanche