* Most days, it was a lack of sun & motion that nurtured violence in me. My lover slept till the afternoon again. His back was to the bedroom all night, my nesting in the blanket unnoticed. He had lukewarm gin. Some video games. Most days, I was restless with the notion that I was once a bathing woman drenched in water & appetite on some faraway rooftop. Most days, I fell asleep alone in his bed, a practice in acrimony. * The days my mother would spend without my father, spread out on the olive & cream bed covers with short stories she ripped out of the New Yorker, flew by with ease. For my father, her absence meant leftovers, nervous feet, & a dent in the way he carried his shoulders. In another life, I can say it: I, too, never learned to be alone. * My lover carefully puts his head on the edge of the desk & strikes down like lightning — once in silence, then to the sound of screams fracturing from my mouth. Neither of us could remember exactly what caused it: Sunday dinner, a film about a man’s memory moving backwards, my desires making a void of him, draining color. My resentment can only simmer. The bump on his forehead lingered like a bug bite. * When my lover breaks his phone against the ground, it feels like my father throwing a bowl across the dining room the year I turned fifteen & refused to take his dirty dishes. When my lover tosses onto the carpet the things I should pack on my way out, (leave now or never) it’s never enough. The toothbrush. Our framed faces with red cheeks & scarves. The chipped coffee mug. Everything still stuck in the teeth of the apartment, having gathered like dust. When my lover kisses my neck, he bites down on the tendon like a habit. When my lover tells me, sitting on the kitchen floor, I’m the guy who loves someone he can never make happy — * My father spoke endlessly about survival & grew red when I wouldn’t listen. How to find shelter. How to build a fire, collect dew & berries. I have tried to sustain us with what I can remember. I offered myself as kindling & the fire subsided. Fruits are hard to come by in the winter.

Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
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