As a child, when I wanted
cheese, I asked for Kraft or Velveeta.

The town is as much a ghost as his wife.

I swallowed it whole and a hedge burst from my breast, brambles grown thorny around my heart.

little / octave, I wear silk too

It is hard to not hate
myself, the self who’d rather/ turn inward as dusk spirals
into its Tang dissolve. And isn’t ruin, too,/ a thing to celebrate?

Throughout the day he touches the necklace and thinks of me.