You learned to say “I need a job” in English at the JFK airport to anybody who would listen. That’s when they put a mop in your hands. So you started mopping, and then you stopped smoking, stopped drinking, or at least that’s what you told me you did. Maybe it was when you had Elizabeth, and before you had us, that you stopped having fun.
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A frog body splayed under a bench spilled its entrails just for us, the only ones here who couldn’t read them. All the birds of the last few days now seemed to augur in the Roman way—where gods’ wills could be seen in their flight, their sound, their type and grouping.
classmates’ eyes : my child’s face))) until my kid walked the halls))) to the school bathroom))))) to text me from a stall))) crying))) feeling what it is))) to really be))) little))) a hard lesson in world history))) a lesson I’d learned))) at that age too.
It’s true that braids are a love language. It’s true that fruit is a love language. It’s true that the shooting star emoji is, too.
I want to know what became of the girl but my aunts don’t know anything more about her, not even her name.
Tell me it will be enough. Tell me it will be enough to wipe away the spreading stain of blue.
The other night at a concert, my brother’s fiancé turned to me and said, Your brother is the only person I like all the time. The only one, she said. Everyone else I grow sick of or annoyed at. But not him. Her comment stayed with me because I feel the same way about you. Even when we are fighting. Even when you are cranky. Even when you eat the last of the quiche. Even when I don’t want to run to Ralph’s and Sprout’s and Trader Joe’s and Target all in the same day. I want to be domestic with you, you said during our affair, when the closest thing to domesticity we could achieve was wandering around Rite Aid together after the gym, pretending we were a married couple picking up shampoo. I think what you meant was—I want all of you, even the boring.
