The kitchen smells like a secret I forgot to bury.
A peach gone soft, skin splitting like a bad promise.
The fruit flies know something I don’t;
they’re the last priests of a dying faith,
and they’re waiting for me to leak.

I tell myself I’m healing,
but last night I dreamt I had to eat your heart to survive.
It tasted like burnt sugar and nail polish remover.
I woke up gasping,
your name soldered to the roof of my mouth
like a curse I didn’t mean to cast.

I call it the trick of wanting:
how I keep looking for your fingerprints in places you never touched,
how I flinch when someone says my name in the dark,
how I let the mirror watch me shatter
and pretend I’m a stained glass window.

Here’s the part I shouldn’t post:
I liked it when you lied to me.
I liked it when you said this isn’t about love
and I let you mean it’s about power.

The fruit flies keep coming.
I pretend they’re a sign from God.
I pretend they’re angels. Or demons.
Never both.
I pretend they’re a reminder that sweetness
is just another word for rot.
I pretend the buzzing is the sound of my name-
fermenting in your guts,
putrefying in your chest,
decomposing in your memory like abandoned fruit.

I know I shouldn’t write this.
But I do.
Because I want you to see it.
Because I want you to flinch.

Because I want you to know:
I am the girl who would eat your heart if I could.
I would peel it open with my teeth,
lick the blood off my lips,
smile like a god in a red dress,
and call it love.

And you’d believe me.

i ask him
what’s wrong

i tell him i’m here
that i will always support him
and the silence stretches
like fabric
thinned by too many washes,
too many wears

i say
i want to be there
but maybe the door is locked
or maybe it’s not a door at all
just a wall
painted to look like one

sometimes
i feel like a ghost in his world
hovering,
wishing he’d see me
noticing how often i check
if he saw
if he’s there
if i still matter

funny
how love turns your ribs into cages
and makes you ask questions
you hate yourself for asking

like
does he think of someone else
does he laugh harder
with someone else
does he hold
someone else closer
even when no one is touching him
does someone else make him
the happiest boy

he once said
i was too much
too close
too everything

and i try to be less
to shrink,
to vanish at the right times
but it still hurts
when he disappears before i do

there are gaps in our messages
and i read them
like tea leaves,
like grief,
like maybe he’s just tired
or maybe he’s tired of me

but still
i would sit in silence forever
if it meant he didn’t have to hurt alone
if it made him
the happiest boy

and i would leave his life
you know,
i would go in a breath
if it made him
the happiest boy

if it meant
he wouldn’t feel the way he does now
whatever way that is
whatever ache he won’t name

but i wish he’d let me stay
and i wish he’d tell me
and i wish i knew
whether i’m still
someone he’d wish to stay too

because even through all this
he is still the one
i would choose to care for
over and over again
even if it leaves me
nowhere at all

Fever painted me all over the body
with its warm kisses of love
for a duration unknown

Taking everything aside of my own being
it was a marvelous feel
to be cocooned into the grip
of this thin frenzy from head to toes
it was immensely ecstatic to
feel the passionate warmth over the skin
and was delirious
to be caressed by its softness beneath the shell.

I want the fever to grab me forever
and want YOU
to be MY fever.
..................................

Answers to the questions you always wanted to ask the departed:
(A counter poem with answers after Ellen Bass Inquest)https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/09/inquest-ellen-bass-poem

She loved apricots, not figs.  
Olives reminded her of saltwater,  
and the yellow irises—those were never hers.  

Her feet stayed clean because she refused to walk barefoot,  
never trusted the ground, never trusted much at all.  

She did not cut her hair  
because she liked the weight of it,  
the way it draped across her shoulders  
like something constant.  

The married man was nothing—  
just a name she could never forget.  

She was terrible in the kitchen  
because she never measured,  
because she thought heat would shape things just fine.  

The chickens shat everywhere  
because she let them,  
because she found humor in their mess.  

The fog over the bridge,  
she watched it,  
but never spoke about it,  
never pointed, never sighed.  

She never trusted anyone fully.  
She won raffles because fortune liked her better than she liked herself.  

She sang the same lullaby her mother sang to her—  
a tune no one quite remembers.  

On the floor, waiting,  
she thought about nothing.  
That was the thing she was best at.  

She could never give up kisses,  
never told where she found the chanterelles.  

She left too much behind  
and too little at the same time.

Passing every shadow,
He reigns the lonely nights of fall.
Through the walls I peek,
To steal a glance at him.
All alone he stand,
To warm the hearts of lost.
I met him by the nights of Autumn,
Behind the clouds he watched
The rest of the ceasing buds.
Oh! How can I not adore
The Majestic Being of the fallen nights,
Though alone in the sky
Never did he try to escape.

To the wintertide,
Sealing every soul of grief
He delivers the summer end.
Marking every beats he close from a distant
But even so at times I grief,
For this Royal Being do
Never reach the bliss spring.