for my cousin Nadia.   Peeled back as a baby to reveal her delicate insides – heart laid bare. Someone wished upon her like a flower and...

South of close relatives, north of the minor arcana of pre-deceased coworkers, neighbors, et cetera, subset of the mammoth    ship of...

The biggest betrayal I ever met I handled like an infant at the supermarket wailing down aisles, bawling tears of denial tearing down...

the windows of the train are cloudy: scratches and water stains blur the surface—it’s just like watching an old television, except there...

I remember buying basil with my mother. At the counter I swam in time too small for weekday nets to catch— where it’s wrists wearing...

When she taught me to swim, she said, only breathe if you absolutely have to — as if oxygen was not needed to live. I often feel like a...

The hue of her wooden frame turned cerulean after her husband left.  Blue now covers the heart’s jagged rock limbs.  She becomes a skiff...

A sigh creates St. Helens’ ash swallowing weeks old milk and grandpa’s leather recliner into the heart of a midwest false-spring...

You were God’s messenger—ethereal creation, the first lesbian I knew besides Shelly Guy, who had a butterfly tattooed on her wrist at a...

A common nook— A girl and her bed and her pillows, Where shrines collect at the bottom of the bed, Piled-up books—hundreds of them. But...

into her hair thick white library paste smeared into her face daddy long-legs shaken into her fist snot-coated tissues shoved and...

After Natalie Diaz She was calling for me in the night-light-free bedroom the one she spends most of her time in. When they came to her...