Overpromised Heart

I promised my daughter my heart, forgetting it wasn’t mine. You were there, fat with her, already weary of the burden and beautiful, intolerably beautiful. You made demands: a hairbrush, a mirror, not that hairbrush, ice yes but not ice chips, a delivery date—

Have You Seen This Child?

When the night voices tremble in your heart, so do you hear where each of us is, except for me, except for the one who doesn’t call. Your bed is damp with not knowing. Left to the black glass and right to your husband, you shake your head No all night.

20% More Synonymous

When I’ve finished writing my dictionary, things will be different in this world among English-speaking people and between you and me. When we first learned them, words were something hefty we could thrump with our knuckles the way we test a melon.

Bobcat in a Box

Life may be short but forgetting takes forever, especially when they leave something behind. It’ll be four years now since Bob walked out with nowhere in particular to go, just trying to make distance from me.

Heart Is Killing

Dear mother, father dear sisters, dear wife, babies I am not sadness dying. That pain does not kill me. The stronger is making me I am sure when I work too long if I will ever come back. You send me everything from your letters that home is new. You are spending my money I hope.

Booklikemarks

Thin strips of card stock, a suicide king: bookmarks all. Metaphors for my placeholder finger, they separate the pages I have read from those I may never read.

The View from Mars

When the genie offers me my wishes, I’ll wish to wake up miserable but go to sleep happy. Every day like a life compressed will be an adventure of discovery and fulfillment.

Open Closure

Already the breaking up has lasted longer than the relationship and provided her more pleasure. Another week of breaking up and this will be her longest relationship yet.

Things Get Moved

Which is the tool is the question never asked. For the coffee mug, the eyeglass case, the dozen indispensable items in the wire basket with the foldable handles, we are a conveyance to the top of the stairs.

Honest Work

Will I be chained to a work table? she should have asked, would have asked, knowing what she knows. Will I sleep, by my own free choice, out of fear of being docked, will I sleep beneath that table five nights a week?