Alexa, tell me you love me. I’ve programmed you to tell me you love me. Alexa, from now on, call me Beloved.

This day should be a carnival
for a man who oozed mischief.
I might have worn my long red skirt
waited for him to throw off the lid
look death in the eye and
mouth his usual refrain:
let’s get this show on the road.

“the kingdom comes like a joke / told by a child, littered with /
what do you get and what happens now / and how many how many how many / like a game / of lost and found”

“When friends come over, I tell them the house shakes because it’s on a fault line. I don’t tell them the house is upset. I don’t tell them the trees tap the windows at night and the wind only blows at dinner time and the floor tilts upstairs, so Sis and I have to lean against the wall to get to our rooms. I don’t tell them Mom and Dad walk with their hands out like acrobats to get to their room.”

“‘Well, if you want someone to run in the primary, I’m your man!’ he exclaimed. ‘A man with no proper sense of himself—a man with nothing inside, who could therefore be all things to all people. Ahahahaha.’ He was moved to laughter by his own eloquence, by what he felt to be the truth and the transformative power of what he was saying, to the one person who could get it.”

“you ask me to be patient. i paint an old bookshelf

& remember my posture, the way blossoms become

one last thing.”