The tiger-eye beads around her neck would wink at me like a nervous uncle sharing a secret with a child. They roll on her sternum like marbles. At night, on her nightstand, they whisper my secret to the patchouli-scented room. How long have they known?

the sound of ashes/ being poured in the kitchen

I asked him where he hurt and he said everywhere.

(vogued.)

When we were young and small we played in the orchard. Mom made apple pies and fried apples, caramel apples and apple sauce, apple cider. Grandma’s apple butter recipe.

I was ashamed of my conscience.

He called me one Friday when I was a kid and told me he wanted to go trout fishing. He had dreamt that I was a worm or a fly -- he couldn't remember which -- but he was sure I would bring good luck to the stream. The next morning, before grandma awoke, I

Soon enough, October’s ragged/ lawn will hide its deficiencies// under withered leaves of oak,

But I had learned from ingesting Roberto’s glitter-eyed fear, it could make you never close enough, and then, never far enough away. And both at the same time.

Eddie meets Sarah Packard, a “college girl” played by Piper Laurie. She walks with a limp, a fact Eddie doesn’t notice at first because she’s sitting down at a diner table in a bus station. She’s alcoholic and writes poetry.

A little poem about prison

We flew./ In my dreams, I can fly.

Sometimes he could feel so small he believed he could fit through the eye of a needle.

Rosea plays a bohemian plainsong for the cosmonauts among us, while her fuzzy apple hips spit glitter, spin strobes: pink shades of pantyline flicker; lip-licked neon hues scrape strings in B sharp, a gloomy clue.

I want you closeI want to feel youinside me,softening me untilmy borders are blurredand I'm hardly breathing,my heart swellingso big itbrings me to my knees,I want to know thepain of losing youeach time youclose your eyes andgo to sleep anddream of someone else,I want to…