SPOUSE
- the hot masc who brings you Klondike bars post-hookup, though you don’t really “eat” these days
- I’m married to my work, you say, choking on blood
- a Sheetz cashier, his gentle face floating between candy bar wrappers, coaxing you from the floor
- marriage is for the birds, you say, & turn into a sparrow
CAR
- soft wings kaleidoscoped amber & white
- 2012 Toyota Rav, its passenger seat a parking-stub graveyard
- walk everywhere, exhausted legs trembling like plucked guitar strings
- floating down the Monongahela—you finally got those windows open—
JOB
- teacher
- you tell your therapist you have no dream job & she says your Inner Child still does & god, therapyspeak is annoying
- teacher who cannot learn lessons like let go, eat 3 meals a day, don’t cut & run after Date 2
- the Inner Child wants to be a fortune-teller; America’s Next Top Model; telephone wires
LIVE IN
- dread—it is too late—you are alone
- a frost-covered bedroom overlooking the river, window wide open, ledge covered in scratches, no birdsong
- fantasy-world, full of vanilla ice cream & vibrators & the smell of her cologne
- the only body you’ll ever get
