We understood it / to be suffering, its beak a little open.
With the right sponge and brush, you could / paint these walls to look like marble. In the two-story / foyer, the previous owner left a giant painting / of southwestern pots.
When we moved with our first newborn / into this ’70s raised-ranch house, / I pretended some benevolent ghost / could soothe him.
that color is not color. The red flower, / she tells me, absorbs all light / but red, so reflects red / where she and I can see it.
Sometimes it’s seaweed in your throat you can’t cough out / or an ink cloud expanding in your skull
What’s the thin break / inescapable, a sudden thud / on the porch, a phone / vibrating with panic on the nightstand?
Out here, I’m lonely enough to open / my body for anyone that finds me
You can’t control what people make of you. / Some see sacrifice / where others see torture
Some mornings, I come to on the floor, / my neck burned with moon tracks
