He crawled through seven weeks,
her voicemail still unplayed
burned letters on the stovetop,
and brushed the ash away.

The mattress holds her perfume,
her hair still haunts the sheet.
It lingers just to gut him,
then breaks beneath the heat.

"I gave you what I carried,
a key, a ring, a name.
You marked it as a chapter,
the ending never came."

Streetlights blink and stutter,
pulse yellow, white, then blue.
They gnaw beneath the ribcage
and press on every bruise.

He heard her laughter echo
through gutter sweat and smoke;
coins scatter on the concrete,
a rimshot to the joke.

He cut this trail in whiskey
left dents along the floor,
no battle flag, no anthem,
just shrapnel from the war.

Her glance, a flint and trigger,
still burns behind the eyes.
Not love, not even fury,
just silence split with lies.

The bottle knew its ending;
its glitter salts the ground.
No sirens in the alley,
all bodies have been found.

He slips the lock in shadow
and drifts beneath the gray.
The gospel wilts by morning.
He never meant to stay.

Steel pan in roadside dirt,
just beyond Exit 11: Quartzsite,
sun bouncing off like a flare.

Handle loose, rim dented,
but not ruined;
still whole enough.

It felt like one I swung
at Tomaso’s,
sweating
through the rush,
that night
we plated sixty covers
in under an hour.

Me, this pan,
were used
the way hard things are:
oiled, scrubbed,
flame-kissed and blackened.
Something thick stuck once,
then let go.

I lifted it,
right hand curved
around the handle
as though it never left.
Some things remember you
even when you forget yourself.

I set it in the backseat,
beside the blanket and bag.
thought I’d clean it up,
tighten the handle,
set it on flame,
hang it by a stove again.

I don’t believe in ghosts,
but I believe in steel,
in things that hold the heat
and give it back to you.

Mortgage-bruised pilgrims
linger along Silver Strand,
pop caps against plywood boarding,
edges furred with salt-rust flakes
from storms that chewed the pier.

Seabee retirees
swap tide updates on porch steps;
third-generation surfers
stitch wax into their palms
and still call this south jetty 'church'.

Here my son and I rinsed sand
from our ankles with a garden hose,
him shrieking, laughing, shivering
when cold bit his feet.

I once yelled at him, raging
for dropping keys into surf,
as if that mattered more
than a day of chasing, wrestling in the tide.
He doesn’t remember.
I can’t forget.

Now, he’s taller than me,
vanishing downshore.

I stand outside, voices rise
in the salt-hard wind.
Barbecue smoke drifts
from driveways, tailgates,
settles into dusk-lit lawn chairs.

Boarded bungalows peel to raw board,
splintering porch rails;
nails weep orange along the grain.

A bike frame, chainless,
reddens into memory beside dune grass
still gripping sand.

There is grace in forgetting:
a tide lowers its voice,
sand swallows what was said.

At lunch I bought a pear,
its shape: a quiet joke.
I cut it clean and slowly,
the blade, the slice, the poke.

It tasted like a breather,
not sweet, just real and right.
Like silence in the stairwell
or breezes late at night.

The afternoon unknotted,
each task a gentler climb.
I fed the cat. I folded shirts.
You’re not here. I’m fine.

I am

decorating.


Renovating.

I slide my lone box over
a few centimeters to the right,
all the snakes pile out, all the
crocodiles cry in the new light,
all the bugs
call me mother
or
something
of the like.

There is a draw string
that I never pull.

There is an empty corner and another
and
another and
oh, well
too many to count
And a memory of
my father
gesturing in silhouette
something I
can’t make out,

but he looks like
a womb, and
he looks like
my husband

and I have to clean


this


room.


I use my
little fingers to trace
the paths of echoes
long silenced
just to taste  
a familiar kind of quiet
because it makes
more sense than this
gnawing,
        idle
           knowing
come upon me as I age,


I must

clean this room

But
I
return

with dust.



There must have been,
I think

Something brilliant here,


once.



My
lone little box, housing my
lone little feather
Underneath my
lone little light
with its drawstring untouched,
because
it flickers
as it likes

All the crawling things beneath
This paltry foil
to my utter
desolation

The snakes,
the bugs,
all plaintiff

I don’t do things
I don’t put things
places,
I don’t
make the room full

I just
wander away.

But I am

decorating.

Renovating.

I slide my lone box over
a few centimeters to the right,

all the snakes pile out, all the

crocodiles cry
  in the new light,

all the bugs

call me fat.