To kiss & not care if the French toast burns, while you push me up against the counter like I should be. To kiss & care just a little…

  Cazenovia, New York At the lake, a woman wades with her toddler, another woman throws a stick for her lab who leaps into the water over and over. A…

  They say you’re a genius boy, straight As and one lazy B, fixing Rubik’s Cubes in blindfolds, winning chess games against the teacher, a whiz kid gathering acclaim. They…

  if it wasn’t already a poem about rape. Here, there is no knife. I’m not caught in the teeth of my mother’s worst dreams—Huffy bike discovered behind the Peoples…

  Their swim finished, feet planted in small puddles as they wrangle suits off, pat themselves dry, weave laughter through the tales they swap— of marriages, new babies, grandchildren, friends…

  Endangered flower, when I learn you open like a wine cup and wait eight days for the pollinating bee to wallow in your bowl, bellied against you, its furred…

  My cousin got arrested for digging trenches to help turtles return to the sea. Pythons have escaped their owners and altered the natural order of things in certain inlets.…

  When autocorrect texts a friend I’m at the fuck pond, I trace the tree line where, in broad daylight, a date once threw me into the whistling grasses. I…

  Let the roads rot. Let the machinery that paves and saws and seals rust. Let houses dilapidate, businesses deteriorate. Let teeth fall out as easily as October crabapples. Let…

  In the heat I am an upper-lip sweater. I can tell I am anxious if it feels like there is a marble stuck in my throat. The longest I…

  Something is bulging and pushing its way in patterns, in risks of what floats and travels. We should be so lucky to see the exact moment it erupts—like a…

  * oat milk * crayons to draw no specific picture to shop for a hobby? * tomatoes—ones that actually taste real * a pause a pass on something I…