{ older, oddly, sorry }

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IMP

the man digging in his yard is looking for his dog. this is my lucky window. in this much silence, a baby could get a tooth. a mom a finger if a car door slams. the man digs and the ice comes for its heartbroken road. wounds move in a deerless world.

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DREAM SAW AND DREAM TOOTH

to be
as asleep
as a father’s
left leg

as a birthday
for a window

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from OHIO DEATHS

you’re getting better but birth is still a joke that grief gets wrong. that luck forgets. dog is too old to look at the animal it younger replaced. care is mostly silent. a cricket in a cake. my tiny saw.

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NEGLECT

it didn’t take long for the frog to become real to those around me. some would bring it back and pat me on the head and some would laugh when I told them it’d never tried to hop away before. some would say it was the frog that was depressed and some would pray for the frog I was lucky to have. when it began to speak, I told myself that’s just how frogs talk. god came to me sooner than most. mom joked that he must’ve known I had a frog to get back to. my sister maintains to this day she had no intention of eating the frog as she was only trying to impress the snake her eyes were made for. by the time I woke her up, her hunger had ballooned and she leapt at me the odd leap of grief.

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