When Robert was small, it seemed like he didn’t quite see people. It wasn’t that he disliked people; it was just that he was more interested in igniting, with matches, small patches of grass soaked in gasoline.
I think about her. A faint yellow light from the street falls on the floor.
The idea that relationships are verses in the song of a life, or that grace notes can be found in ruined loves, struck a chord of latent sentimentality.
When the estate agent arrived I was asleep. I thought about not letting them in. They knocked on the door three times. But I knew that my brother would be pissed if I did not let them in. So I went downstairs and opened the door.
Avez-vous trouvé tout ce que vous cherchez? the checker asks.
The Years Dad Blamed the Breeze
Some nights I imagine Dad as the lift in a shoe or wing of a plane—
his wisdom packed with imaginary insight:
all shadows have eyes,he'd say, stoking the embers
I murdered the cat on a Tuesday and by Wednesday morning I was back to work, saying nothing to anyone, scanning milk cartons and zucchinis and rolls of toilet paper.
When I was about five, I prayed to God as I lay in bed. I prayed for the speed of a cheetah, just like the character I had seen in a cartoon on TV. He could run away from anything.
“and where’s the melody
to remedy the melody, the remedy to remedy the remedy”
-Diane Seuss
Last ever moments of falling
asleep with you, last
ballooning mood & heartbeat
so I
Something bad happened. I sat on the bed. Tammy was under the bed but I didn’t know that. And the mattress is held up by wooden slats but the slats weren’t cut long enough, so they barely hold up the mattress and if you shift your position on the bed, there is a good chance that the slats will move out of place in the frame and the mattress will fall through the frame. And that’s what happened. The bad thing.
When she died, she just wasn’t there. I had to ask about her. She wasn’t in the usual place.
You find yourself crying on the phone to your manager, telling them you don’t know if you’re in an emotionally abusive relationship or not. That probably deserves certainty.
I think they mean they just don't like a woman going around going "cunt cunt cunt."
Across the vacant middle seat an old man is sleeping through all of this, chin to collarbone, neck bent at a right angle.
Macy’s Closeout Sale
I am curious what newcomers think of my city,
but it is not really
And any of the people that had been counted correctly, including me, could move or die, making the incorrect count accurate once again, if only for a moment.
It was revolution by music. The world would never be the same.
I don’t smoke, I called out, but no one heard me, and I sounded uncertain.
seeds
when nothing smells like you
i let dawn-colored fruit rot in the blue bowl
spray perfume thru the air and try to touch
myself the way you touched me
too bad we met/never met
I just remember the room dense with familiar sound, the melancholy howl of the perfectly in-tune saxophones, the electric brilliance of trumpets, a drummer with eight arms; my mother looking over at me, expectantly, as if to say, “This is what you wanted, right? This is making you happy?”
What will be will be. She was a good swimmer, and at least he was getting some exercise.
I leave behind a lot of empty wine bottles.
You said eat anything in the fridge and I did
right down to the last gherkin.
Unrelated: your turtle is dead.
You failed to mention it and I failed
to
