Maggie, Della, Tallulah, and I went flower-hunting in the mornings. We’d be flower-hunting while breakfast cooked over the campfire.

WWI: you fought in the Battle of Soissons, France, / allies vs. Germans, July 18-22, 1918.

You told me the trick / was to become only lungs / mimic sleep

Reading a quote a famous actor gave about the fiasco involving a certain movie, and how the movie was having its visual effects remade so the main character would be more palatable to the online public…

Blonde college guy in Target met my eye, / and I did not consider it’s because / of my lavender velvet sundress

i wash myself in blood soap / that smells like strawberries / sickly, staining everything it touches

today we try leaving three times. / 1 the howls subside. they find me, back steps, reading a book.

My grandmother used to say / we can never truly know someone.

I will let you bury me. Pretend it’s just / a fantasy if I would desiccate / in your backyard.

This patio, where many joyous times were had, / these will be the last of them. 

English proved to be comical at best. / I was in 3rd grade when I was finally fluent. / But I’m jumping ahead of myself.

i never thought my purpose a violent one / until I met her 

every now and then / a banshee hijacks my lungs then / screams / through my opened mouth

it’s so easy to bare my teeth / to growl / claw my way / through whatever you thought I was.

a casino of speckled memories vehemently / spurning cremation.

Not water lilies floating behind Plexiglas / or the icy stare / of van Gogh’s self-portrait, / but the ballerinas

One hundred fifty Canada geese float in my blood. They know something about the cold and constrict the vessel-ways…

Picture a corsage / made of 44 dandelions / picked to test the / lung capacity / of a 23-year-old

We arrive soaked with June’s torrential downpour. Monday morning plaits into a queue of bodies, each engaged with the business of waiting.

Keep off the grass. Keep off the grass.