the overdose will not be cataloged / there will be no mention of bodies on the carpet / ​I slipped the Narcan back into the box & buried it / in the garden.

God Loves You 22 / declares the billboard on my commute / this morning, towering over the ragtag surf / of cars and highway, everyone busy on their way

You know it exists / but everyone around you says it doesn't. / Sometimes you can feel it pressing in / as your partner submerges in a place / filled with drinks and smiles

Her heart was not entirely stone. Her interior seemed comprised of one stone & one bird. She told her parents she read a short piece by her favorite poet, Victoria Chang…

The dental hygienist showed me / pictures of the coastline of my gums / to persuade me to buy a mouthguard. See / she says. This is very advanced for your age.

i walk one morning while it's still dark / watch the big dipper as i make / my way over to the boulevard a few streets / from my house

Even now I can't stop looking / for houses, changing the search / parameters – one bathroom or / two, another $50k on the maximum, / townhouse or single family home.

What did I bury that never came back? / Baby teeth and loose change eventually / find their way to me. When do I stop?

A roof is like the deck of a boat, / Beyond the gutter we will fall into the abyss.

What I wouldn't pay—a bleeding sack of / Surgeon, tailor, sculptor hands, / To guzzle down their gizzards, / Lick their locks clean

the passage, sore eyes, slow / emptiness. the darkness / beneath these half-bunkers / is a border.

The sea has not been seen by me, though / thoughts of salt and spray have always filled / my mind.

Bellatrix Sakakino perpetually craved her favorite food. Her problem was that it was a rather unconventional favorite.

When the driver came forward it was Death himself kindly stopping a little too late and spilling his beer when he hit you head-on…

I had no idea I could bleed like that. All that blood I wasted from my foot on a sliver of the salsa jar I didn't break.

In the halls of old text messages, / you avoid last night / like lingering campfire heat / over the cold eggs of morning.

I am seventeen and the world is a shell / Walking the interstate with my dry hand in hers / Sky arid above us, acres of absence aching / Like a scar.

Bradford walked into the office with his head cocked severely to the side, holding his thin phone in place. "Yes . . . yes. Okay. I'll look the minute I sit down."

It takes journalists, directed to the site, / three hours to hike, in sunlight, brush covered / trail, a rocky terrain

I practice punching / at the kitchen table / on the couch / in my sleep / I make a fist