To Burn:

First you need a match. I come to you the way an animal finds a quiet place
to die. Your car is the type that hums so softly it’s like being in the center of
a human body. Your body & mine sit quiet behind the bowling alley that
teenagers slink through like cats. Toffee-colored & bored. The crease of your
eyelids made beautiful by the moon, pearls carved from cheesecake or gutted
fish. We crave the ocean. Water swallowing us with its salt mouth. Water
swallowing our small fires with its unquenchable tongue. You are teaching
me that touch is another way of returning what you borrowed. In the parking
lot plastic & dry leaves stir like a sarcoma of the forest. We are returning to a
place we’ve never been before. Through the sunroof a synchronicity of birds
fill the sky, dulled by the neon, wings forming a circle of quietly burning fires.

Advice to be rid of ghosts

If I keep walking. If I turn the radio up. If I turn
the TV up. If I uproot the neighbor’s vegetables.
If I learn how to swim with my eyes open. If you call me
 & I don’t pick up. If I learn how to cut through sheets
of glass & melt candles to their wicks. If I don’t apologize.
If I burn every pair of leather shoes in your closet
& don’t’ apologize. If I stop wincing
when I hear keys catching in locks. If I buy
cans of wasp spray or almond milk or a Labrador.
If the dentist puts his hands inside my mouth.
If I buy boxes of hair color & empty them
into the sink. If I run. If I don’t stop.