Sylvia’s Son I was wrapped in a towel like a bad dream, wet feet on linoleum. I was too preoccupied to see the cracked blood, to hear the silence until I was knee- deep in your tomb. Sometimes, I dreamt you were a baby being born, waking to a pain that was not yours, a motherhood I never had. It […]
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Mammo At first, the grief was bare, an unsheathed sword, its presence sharp. But then it turned, slowly, into a faded tattoo on a hidden part of my body. I tried calling your phone last night. I don’t know what I expected, but I was scared. When I’m dripping in too much darkness, that same profound, welling of […]
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On Mixing Macarons and Vicodin That winter split me like firewood. I was smaller, splintered, Elliot Smith would play on cassette in my blue Volkswagen, while our breath coursed through flared nostrils and damaged lungs. * I hid my pain like a sick dog. I slinked out, under the back deck, I swallowed some pills. In those hideous places I […]
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Elizabeth, Mother of my mother, her knotted knuckles cradled my scraped elbows, the heaviness of my childhood heart. Her beauty unrepeatable, blistering. She stands hunched over the sink, peeling potatoes, buttering bread, in the yellow light of the pre-war kitchen she is ageless. When I think of home, I think of her, kindness dripping from her embrace like honey. […]
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Life Science If only I was older, wiser than gapped tooth, golden haired twenty-two, I wouldn’t have wondered, what whiskered man is this? His hair like a peppered moth, he sat stubbing cigarette butts into the ancient ruins of the bar ash tray. There was a familiarity in the corner creases of his brown eyes. I could smell the paste […]
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