“in this dream, a bird’s ribs are pulled apart in imitation of a flowering — the wolf bends, and, tamed halfway, makes a nest among the wet tremors of her viscera. mother says i never should have sewn my heart from the sorrows of thistle. the field of it has sprouted poppies, jagging apocalypse from my flesh — now i stand drunk and death-kissed, heavy with such strange fruitings; o, mother, kiss me. this is your daughter’s wedding night: the last of her loves is pine-crowned, as green still as in the cradle.”

“You never forget. It must be somewhere inside you. Even if the brain has forgotten, perhaps the teeth remember. Or the fingers.”

“maybe i’ll write a poem about october one day, but right now everything is laced in buttercups and the scent of rain fresh on the pavement. do you see what you’ve done? how i’m pretending to love the taste of dandelion fluff again. there’s everything poetic in your wide eyes but there’s no actual words that measure up. i’m watching you and trying to learn how to heal. how to fall back in love with a world that tried to rip me out of it by the mouth. your voice like the clear ringing of a bullet ripping through this city. i don’t know where the wound will end up. i just hope the birds survive. i just hope i don’t have to watch it rain feathers again.”

“And all I loved, I loved alone.”

“I have never been allowed to be holy, / I have never been forgiven for wanting.”

“It is very sad to me that some people are so intent on leaving their mark on the world that they don’t care if that mark is a scar.”

“Her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.”

“Bones break the same way no matter the intention.”

“i want to almost not exist. / almost is the closest i can get to the sky.”

“Darling, Have you ever not pulled things from the wreckage? Are you tired? Do your arms hurt? Who offers you honey when you need it? Who lets you rest?”

“Her smile, I’m sure, burnt Rome to the ground.”

“i. the way he never tolerates his friends disrespecting you, the way he’s just as affectionate in front of his boys as he is in private. ii. he always holds your hand in public and it’s not possession, it’s partnership. you ask him about it once, the way his hands always seem to find some place on the most innocent parts of your body. and he shrugs, “i like the feeling of being close to you.” he says it simply like it means nothing at all. you smile for the rest of the day. iii. he couldn’t afford to buy you anything expensive for your birthday because you’re both young and broke and trying to carve out some space in the world big enough for the two of you to exist without being crushed. but he cooked you breakfast and sang happy birthday, loud and off key, to anyone who would listen and danced you drunk under fairy lights in the courtyard. and when he dipped you down so that the only things you could see were him and the moon, he buried his face in your neck. said your name very quietly against your skin, held you for a beat longer and a degree tighter than usual until your name was something else on his lips. iv. he does the dishes because he knows you hate the way the dishwater feels against your skin. v. when you brought him home for the first time, he was nervous. all words tripping over each other and your mother’s favorite flowers spilling from his hands and more ‘yes ma'am’s’ than a southern boy at his favorite grandmother’s house. he slept in the cold basement that your dad hadn’t gotten around to insulating yet even though your parents said he could sleep on your floor. “i want them to trust me,” he said, “i want them to know i would never take advantage of their kindness. or of you.” vi. that week that you could barely get out of bed because you were so sick, he watered that little plant on your windowsill at work without telling you. vii. he paints the nails on your left hand and replaces your sodas with water and keeps a spare hair tie in his wallet and remembers your best friend’s birthday and slips granola bars into your purse on the days he knows you’ll forget to eat lunch. viii. when you argue, he doesn’t raise his voice. and he says sorry when he’s wrong and it sounds like an apology, not an excuse. he forgives you for the little things. for the big ones too.”

“I have been missing your voice / like bleached bones dream of flesh.”

“Nobody’s sin, nobody’s white-Knuckled / god, nobody’s humming bird.”