day 3

Wooden Hearts


A man with a bat smashed in my jaw because love is swollen and splintered. Stripped down to my panties in the center of town, blindfolded and holding three sharpies, I already had a heart on my left breast, right butt cheek, and forehead, drawn by some passerby I wouldn't see again. He asked what I was doing. I told him, accepting myself in public, and heard him smile before the silky smack and "do you love that?" His voice sandpapered my ears, filled them with his petrified anger. Tapping the wood against concrete, he waited. I guess for my tears. He tapped faster and I appreciated the bat's kiss with the air, pre-contact-- my thigh this time. Soft and soundless. I almost begged him to keep going. To keep loving me with each sting, growing me. All at once, it stopped and the silence burned. All at once, I lay alone on the concrete, not as vulnerable as before--I owned this love now. Each welt a token those sharpied hearts couldn't offer.

day 2

Taking back

On Monday, my mother said
we were taking him back
to New York, where he'll
be buried under a plaque
with dates, not a 401k amount.
I wish, somehow, I could send
cigars, bowties, and a bottle
of Jack so he could drink. 

I found her, cross legged
and yelling, on the floor
of her closet with two cuff
links in her hand.
It should have been you,
she shouted. And I thought
she meant me, for a moment.

I imagine him sitting upright
In the seat next to me, flying
North, cracking a joke
to the attendant, asking
for an Old Fashioned, nudging
my shoulder with a wink.

How do you send a body
back? Is it like a gift?
Wrapped in cellophane
and bubbles, saying this
was wrong, without words?