The night is like the night in a ballad.
I ramble in it, fearful but not helpless.

Our hotel is booked for five days. My father is giving me the space to forgive him. Space is a function of time. On vacation, days span whole lives.

As I have gotten to be an older and more seasoned writer, I’ve experienced a similar set of emotions as I’ve contemplated the extra rooms or Nowhere Spaces within my own prose. I’ve realized just how much of a story gets told off the page.

I become
my own guest (in mother words,

a duty).

Bud took four Seconal, masturbated into a tea towel, and decided to drive the Subaru into the sea.

Row closer, my child,
let me kiss the slip of you,
your little body unmade
in its making.

Dinner is the only time when what’s going on in your mouth is also going on in my mouth. It’s dinner and it’s kissing.

We got the idea for the scam from a kid who lived at the Y, where Charles and I had been staying. This was months ago, back when we were hopeless.

You know if the transplanted organ fails—Helen speaks
to me earnestly, wonder in her voice—the patient can sue. She
widens her eyes. Sue who? The dead donor? Go try it!