There’s a shirt hanging 
in my closet
among so many others 
elegant, simple but fussy 
there’s a trick to ironing the collar
a charcoal blend of wools 
I bought second-hand 
years ago
for you. 

It was for someone tall,
which I am not.
And while I do remember 
wondering how I looked 
from up there,
something happened
I never gave it to you. 

I wore it myself sometimes 
until I got too big in the belly 
so it hangs there among my 
husband’s shirts
too big for him 
sometimes I reach up 
and feel it. 

***

I can’t sip. 
I don’t remember how to sip. 

I was raised right.
I can make sure not a single cracker crumb hits the carpet. 
I can excuse myself with an effacing grace. 
I rip my dinner rolls apart with the sinister dexterity of the inaugural debutante.

But I need to gorge on your mind.
I need it to be filled up with me.
And I want that thick purple need to spill over onto the longest, whitest tablecloth in history. 

Destroy something for my sake. 
Mesmerize yourself with your own perverse interpretation of my personhood,
and tell me more than I should know about that oblique and deliciously incorrect perspective.

Steal into the catalogue of your components and wrap me a gift. 
Dedicate an artery to me and draw me a map so I may swim there.
I will sit inside the cavern just above your liver and let your blood rush by, 
soaking my feet in your hot life. 

I want to be worshiped, 
but I need to stay small. 

***

I was planning all month to get up when you 
arrived so I could get both the hello and goodbye embraces 
but in the moment I forgot, or rather didn’t forget, but I was wearing 
a short dress and the chairs were made of metal and 
on concrete they don’t slide out so easily 
and neither do I
plus I was wearing such high heels that I’m not sure where they would 
have put your chest in relation to my chest and my arms 
in relation to your arms so I stayed seated and told you 
I’d only arrived 45 seconds before you had, which 
was the second lie of the night.