I curl my hands into
His tight curls loosened by shampoo
Briefly kisses my hazy gaze

Grab his hand before he scrubs
Into the generous pile of soap and
Buries it to my chest
I greedily soak up the soap.

The bath water is delicately blue
Balanced between a light smoky exhale
And the edges of the midday sun
Reflecting impurities from our bodies

The news he broke like an egg
About to be dropped into boiling water
The tension seeps past the skin
And settles into my newly softened joints.

Did the raven flock
A faraway dark forest
Envious silence

she has a really flat face like someone kicked a soccer ball into it so he’d call her Soccerball Face
and so
he’d come over to my house
and draw pictures of her and just leave them around
and write poems
he’d just write over and over
“LOVE CAN BE PAINFUL.”

The slow decline in poets and novelists
over centuries
"it's not a profitable profession",
the media sighs

as if
pressing your products against
the fresh face of youth
is a morally just career

writing a haiku
left hand counts the limiting
cruel syllables

without a window
a lonely poet is just
a lonely poet