She sits still in a corner
He juts in to the room
White butterflies adorn her
He carries darkest doom


She keeps her feelings hidden
He knows of them and sighs
She cowers as was bidden
They both eye up her thighs


She loves those undeserving
Ignoble hands, he grasps
She holds his gaze unnerving
He takes without an ask


She mounts a throne of wounding
He spouts a light impure
She counts the nights in bruising
His will to shape contours


She bathes herself in shadow
He takes with him the light
She dreams it a fandango
He lets her think she's right


She makes her home the corner
He makes her house a hell
She smiles inside her torpor
He knows she'll never tell

With a week to live
how would you live it?

Sulk?
Celebrate?
Would it be different?

Would you reminisce
on your livelier days?

Or love
in the last of them
every which way?

Let us pretend
That we were nothing
But some casual affair
2 AM ***** dystopia
Just another night
To forget

Let us pretend
That years of silence
Can somehow bend
White lies into
Truth

Let us pretend
For burying regrets
Seems all there's
Left to do

After Dad died
Mom taught me her sauce-
olive oil, garlic,
whole tomatoes I crush
like hearts on her cutting board.

I remember his palette,
cinnabar and vermillion,
while she screamed over the stove
and he disappeared
into the attic light.

She was an artist once,
before I lived in her body,
before she hemmed my dresses
and cooked her life
into someone else’s evenings.

“It was always this simple?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“I used to do it the hard way.
Like Nonna.”
Her eyes don’t leave the simmering ***.

Love left alone will scorch,
turn bitter on the tongue
of whoever waits too long
for someone to taste it
before it burns.