Our legs knotted together, hers to mine.
Bare in her blue sheets, finger-painting
her finger tips. I inhaled all I could.
and then she kissed

me for the first time after we tangled
together. I tasked her love, burning,
traveling down my throat.
Right then I remembered

when I was nine year old, holding the gun
my father gave me. His eyes watching.
I pointed its nose toward the mother doe
and pulled. My heart beating

heavily as it is now. Her raspberry
wine lips, tasting like the pain
of many men, still burning
in my throat. Knowing if I stay

my heart would burn too. I gathered
my clothes from the ground. Looking
back only once, leaving
out the door. I held my mother’s

hanging face eight years after I shot the gun
my father gave me. I kissed her eyebrow
and she told me, People are selfish. They take
and they take until nothing

is there and then they leave. In the morning
I woke in my bed. Alone. Feeling
hollow and sunken as the lying, dead doe. I exhaled
everything out and tasted

nothing.