Under the late spring sky I reach for you I leaned over sticky counters Lying to boys in the dark July like one long bar fight It is growing dark and the orange lamps of the street turn on Wedging my fingers beneath a stuck pull tab Parking garage romance We will play rounds of pull tabs and lose every single one 1. What it feels like to lose a tooth 2. My great great grandmother’s name 3. How to knit in the round 4. The name of my neighbor who I was best friends with until she moved away when I was 4 5. The last time I could look at my phone without feeling at least slightly nauseous 6. The plot of the movie Cars 2 7. My class schedule from my senior year of high school 8. What my mom and I talked about on our rides to school in the morning Did you ever hit him back? Lace wing larva Trying to make myself pure through the blood As though my suffering will save me It was better And I wanted to But the guilt rotted through it Sickness seeping into the candy sweet kiss Can’t have shit in Detroit How much of him is about you Your childhood home went up in flames last week It felt like a reckoning, watching the place your mother had fled burn in the night You felt something, standing on the street in the orange glow It wasn’t quite mourning, but it was close And it felt wasteful to use such precious emotion on the destruction of a place you hated Thripids Battle royale Aviemore