Thursday

Ruidoso burns, Spencer residents haul waterlogged sofas onto their front lawns.
In Oslo, one of the more beautiful men I’ve ever seen glances at my photos, taps a heart.
He doesn’t message and I measure how long to wait before telling him he’s so hot I could cry.
What do they do with roadkill? Where did the two men who came to remove the deer
impaled on my friend’s fence take its body? Was it burned or does it even now rot?
Nearly 21,000 kids are simply unaccounted for in Gaza. They lie under their homes’ stones.
In Idaho, a dry breeze drifts from the sycamore across my windowsills past the lilacs.
I toast sourdough and spread blue cheese dressing, lay down green leaf lettuce,
overlap tomato slices and pile on oven-crisped bacon, feel it crunch under the top bread.
A beautiful man in Los Angeles asks my height, if I grew up playing sports.
It always feels superior to say ballet, omitting that art’s propensity for humiliation.
Stop working. Reach out to me first. You told us things would be lighter with this new job.
My family texts from Montana and I live always with fear in the periphery,
goading me to look it in the eye, that hour or two between the click of the lamp
and sleep the riot of it. At work I write about our team in Ruidoso, Spencer,
handing out pet food and toothpaste. I edit a fundraising page for a dog who was shot
named Lucky. A beautiful man in Minneapolis gives me a number I won’t text.
Housewives get drunk, bicker and embrace in Dubai, New Jersey, Orange County.
In my book a man sleeps with his friend’s daughter and becomes embroiled in post-war
French socialist politics despite wanting only to write a novel. He writes a play and sleeps
with his ingénue lead. A tuxedo cat sits on the patio opposite mine, kept close by pink string.
In the depths of my bowels the world’s array of important things all trade in magnitude.

This piece was featured in Volume 3, Issue 1. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.