My mom used to grind tomatoes every October
for canning with this metal monster that kept it's mouth
clenched on the edge of our kitchen table
for weeks at a time. I used to climb up the stools
just to barely crank the tail around and around,
watching the vegetable guts spill into a cauldron.

She would give me a mini Krackle bar
if I could count all of the jars to at least ten,
their gold rims like little crowns that she would carefully
twist over their heads, the reflection from the setting sun
bouncing off my Kindergarten cheeks. My dad,
pretending to be a cartoon character behind her back
as I covered my mouth in secret laughter. I can't prove it,
but I bet she smiled as she rolled her eyes, pretending
not to be totally in love with a forty year old man
who's heart was as young as his daughter. Now,

she can't even stir Campbell's soup without crying.
The sound of the crank is only like the sound of the car
as they tore apart it's skeleton just to find my dad's baseball cap
stuck in the glass of the windshield. So instead,
now ten years later, I tuck pictures in places
I know she won't look, say prayers when she's gone to sleep,

and pull the curtain over the jars
of the homemade spaghetti sauce in the cellar.

She’s the type to eat a bowl of ice cream,
shoot a gun, and be fine. I’ve never seen so many pieces
under someone’s rug before, but she keeps
herself in cookie jars, in ink cartridges, in book binds,
anything she can find. I’m surprised she even looks
in the mirror anymore. It’s not possible that she’s herself whole.
But she braids her hair back when she rides her horse,
she channels old Miranda Lambert
and pumps that kerosene melody through her veins
like it wont’ catch fire. I’ve seen her
poke her head through old sweaters like she thinks
it’ll be something new this time. I’ve seen her paint
her skin in expensive body washes, the washcloth
like sandpaper as she tries and tries to smooth
all of the uneven edges she’s collected.

I bet you could watch her memories in a wishing pool,
like in a mini mall, with all the pennies heads down.
They would spin themselves around the surface,
suffocating one another so that only the good ones would shine,
but she dare not pour herself into something that reflective.
It would only reveal what she ties into the waistband
of her old American Eagle jeans every morning,
and that would just be too **** hard. It’s easier
to venture ******* with a crummy perspective
and a realistic approach than it would be to even consider
that maybe this time it wasn’t her fault
for expecting to much, and that maybe people just ***** up.
That maybe, for once she wouldn't blame it on it getting her hopes up
that made her fall, but that no one was there to catch her.
I’d rather watch her cry herself to sleep for months

than to pretend I admire the harsh falsetto she bites back
in all of her lullabies. But she’s the type
to burn old pictures for fun, to delete contact names,
to swallow all her sadness and paint her bedroom a new color
than watch herself come undone.

She told my dad he was “kind of an *******”
the first time we had dinner with him,
at this place called The Pear Room
but she was disappointed that there were not only
no pear decorations, but that there was not a single dish
with a pear included. She ordered a dry martini
with three olives on a skewer,
but she never took one sip. She gulped.

She came at me like an avalanche in jean mini skirt.
I tried to run ahead of her, but she picked up speed
and tossed me right into her path with scratch marks
on my back to prove it. You’d never know it
by the way she twirls her hair into a bun at the top of her head
just to take her make-up off, how she laughs
instead of getting ******, or how she sometimes
orders her dessert before her meal, but she’s just a girl
who puts on her toughness in the morning like a slip.
She folds

her dollar bills into fourths before she puts them in her wallet,
and she strings herself like paper chains
against the sun every day as she drives to a job she hates.
She listens to Miles Davis on her record player,
asks me to dance at half past eleven on nights I need to sleep,
but I get up anyway. I pour us both a glass of Coke
and try to capture the reflection she doesn’t see of herself,
mirror it in my eyes, just so she knows that she
is not just another item on the menu.

If I painted a picture of you
I think I’d call it Daniel and his Favorite Cigarette
and I’d delay passing the sugar
because you couldn’t wait four more seconds
for your daughter to finish her story.
I would buy all of the newspapers in town
with the crummy headline Fauster & Brown
Up in Sales for 3rd Week Straight and burn them
all the way through to the sports section
just to watch your favorite team’s numbers
go up in flames. I would rewrite
all those Father’s Day cards, remove the empty seat
in the third row on the left from my poetry reading
that I had reserved, stop putting new batteries
in the remote when you complains. But of course

I won’t. I’ll just make a scene at Sunday brunch
after we finish saying prayers to my dead big brother
at his grave, that dash like a tattoo on my bones—
Yes, Dad, I could have worn a tie
but I like the fact that I still smell like yesterday
cause I know my brother will never know
the scent of tomorrow. I will only curse
between sips of coffee and I’ll stroke my sisters hair
so she knows at least someone has been listening
these past ten years.

My apartment still smells like cigarettes from Saturday
when a couple girls with crop-top ambitions
drank themselves through flip cups and through guys’ eyes
who purposely landed on their belly-buttons.
I might have stood on the couch to sing that song,
but I’ve fallen for you all wrong. After another remix,
everyone left and we played footsies while leaning
in the doorway of my bathroom, the wood trim chipping
but your smile brightening in the yellow overhead light.
And I promised I wouldn’t find myself
come Monday morning sitting here with my knees knocking,
and knocking, and knocking themselves back into my brain
that keeps reminding my heart that we expired last season,
and that it’s just too **** late.
I promised myself I wouldn’t wipe my tears on my sweatshirt sleeves,
or run my toes on the tile, or breathe in another toxic pack
of what I essentially believe is you. You are the *** I pour myself into.
You are the chance I keep giving myself seconds of.

I know I shouldn’t have separated myself that quickly, or without notice,
but honestly I didn’t know how to attach myself to someone
unless it was delicate and barb-wired together. I’m sorry I ******* it up,
back then, before the mess, wherever you’d like to pinpoint
the blame on our timeline
but you are the only chance I keep giving myself seconds of.
So I’ll distance myself between my body and this frame,
cut out text-message screen shots and paste them to my frown
so maybe I can remember what it was like to smile
without ******* cigarette smoke between my teeth.

He holds the corners of my smile with his thumbs
like the way he balances his self-worth on top of how much I believe
he can hold on the surface of his heart without caving.
And I know that maybe the inside of his dreams
have been filled with wallpaper reminders of a dad gone missing
or fixing cars on Saturday’s, but his hands
are callused just enough to know they’re real, and they cover
me with their warmth at night as he loves on my body,
folding in my ribs until I’m weak.

Sometimes I watch him while he sleeps, tucking
my whispers behind his ear and taking off the blanket
from his legs cause I know he’s too hot, but he always
makes sure the goosebumps on my body come from his touch
and not the way the winter breathes.

I like to think we met let letters do,
in a 2 a.m. sentence or a delusional poem
that seeps from the cracks in worried souls and fingers.  
Our outlines, the ***** of his side and the bumps of my hips
fit together like cursive and I could write him for a lifetime.

We were sitting in metal lawn chairs, off balance,
rocking between one chair leg and the next
on the cracked sidewalk just in front
of some ice cream shop I don’t remember the name of.
But I do remember how the drips of melted chocolate
looked like two teardrops sitting on your orange shirt collar,
and I do remember how the breeze would fit
through the triangle-shape of sky in the crook of your elbow
as you leaned in on the table just to steal a lick from my cone.
I hate salmon and sea foam colors, but somehow the reflection
of the bold letters in the metal shine of the counter looked good
on your cheekbones, highlighting you in the softest ocean neon.
And I thought we’d take a walk on the shore like a Jason Mraz song,
but we just made love in the hotel room, my sand-stained bikini bottoms
drying on the balcony ledge, seagulls landing on your socks
with the toes still soaked cause we just couldn’t wait
to jump in, like I do to your skin, when we’re alone and dancing
on top of one another to the muffled sound of the waves
hitting the screens of the sliding door.

I could pack myself
for months inside of you, just travel through your smile like a boarding pass.
And you’d think I’d be out of words by now, but I savor you
like sour patch kids on the car ride, stuffing my face with your sweetness
until my tongue is sore and I have to remedy myself
with another night of tangling myself
in your arms like umbrella stands, shading me
from the curve of the sun as it dies,
fading into the night like we do
when we toss ourselves into our cheap, road trip evenings,
all the money we shouldn’t have spent, and the way our bodies line up
end to end.