He walks out for the last time
Perched on a three-stack of visitor chairs
he tastes the irony;
she’s not supposed to do the leaving.
They were his affairs.
Each time she’d told him to get out,
stay out. He hadn’t been home in years.
A nurse taps his arm,
hands him a bag
He thinks how light it feels —
less than his bread and milk.
He drops out of the chairs,
asks if he can go now.
He walks away,
not knowing how
to hold what’s left of her,
after all this time.
Four foot eleven and needing a lift
I try not to see the white hairs poking out
from the woman’s chin in the lift,
I’ve given up boob envy
and my face sag’s refusing to lift,
won’t Gua Sha away.
My driver’s seat lever won’t lift
me enough, so I accept your kind offer of lifts
into town. I sit in the child seat,
say thanks and climb
out of your car. My gaze lifts.
I hear myself blurt
you have egg on your lip.
Each of my lifts
is a levelling up, or a lift
to the chocolate;
the bar I hid from myself.
Cumulonimbus pelts off
Her arctic night breath stings,
freeze-flooding bedroom air.
Sun-up and she the bathroom blizzard;
stacking boxes of not-pregnant blue line.
A polar vortex thunderbolts the door,
squalls across the street.
Tight isobars unravel;
high pressure.
Flights, Issue Thirteen, August 2024
Flight of the dragonfly 