“I was the first cigarette, untouched out of a new pack, she inhaled me”

“Lose something every day — drop coins / from the hole in your pocket, go hungry / at school.”

“These words, herbs, and visions accompanied me through a monthlong spiritual ceremony of separation.”

“I have hunted for Mother / Howled at Mother Moon / Pricked my healing with Mother Cactus / Touched my pleasure parts, the Mother Wound”

“to stay together means not to begin living / to begin living is a separation”

“unwieldy love ritual of spring- / time pushing golden violet into the sky as / trinket and incense, your voice / in my warm hand. Who are you / in your dreams?

“A story that you cannot leave is a prison.”

“The good memories turn. Admit you loved me, the woman mutters over her mother’s grave.”

“When I think of Pauline screaming my heart slips and I remember being clumsy with your dead body, knowingknowing you were still there zooming around the room scared but listening”

“jules was not / trying / to be a man / either. us lit blue / on the hotel / bed by a dim bulb.”

“At some point I became keenly aware / of my unhinged potential to be immersed / in the nothingness that follows, / you know what I mean?”

“Our mother’s hands made us out of / buried bone, dreams burnt like wings / birding flightless girls.”

“do you consider yourself a good and pleasing thing? / if no, how long until fluent in the language of flagellation?”

“You are sixteen and you are still ( ). The world says you(r choices) are limited. So you ( ).”

“when I / was young, girlhood was the loneliest lamppost, a / thing I looked at when I walked home alone at / night.”