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I am lost


in stickers and lists and glitter and markers.

Leave

Pull it out-


I beg-

I don't want
your hook
stuck deep
in my heart

pull it out

I am
the pain
as it tears
trailing
behind you
as you leave

a piece of my heart
still
impaled
on the end

the remains
pump blood
from
my pores

pull it out

Regifting

She says:

After she died, your father called because he didn't know how he was going to take care of you children.

She says:

I took your older sister, you and your brother stayed with your father.

I freeze in shock and try to remember to breathe.

I don't try to correct her: my older sister had went to live with her at least a year and a half before she died, to get away from it.  I don't correct the math: I was twelve when she died, and my older sister is 7 years older than me, and left to live with her when my older sister was seventeen. She repeats it:  I took your older sister, and you and your brother stayed with your father.

I ask:

How did my parents meet?

She says:

I'm not actually sure, but I know that she was working for him watching the children.

I say:

So he married the nanny.

She grins.

Typewriter poem

I wrote this on a typewriter
It is always all about love



Of course, I am not good at this either.

fortress

with the brother:
dead calf in dry creek, sinews
bulging milky cornflower eyes
on the way to tree fortress
trees grow anyways for chairs
green branches canopy
hidden from the rest

the father sighs:
I wondered what happened to her calf

and

with the sister and her friends:
picking berries off thorns
bushes in the middle
pathway between fields
sweet juicy plump berries
explode around the mouth
random sour, pucker

sitting on the hump in the middle
of the back seat of the car
between the sister and the brother

and

the pony who disappeared

the father whines:
it's not always about you, you know

and

the mother.                                   the mother.

Heart

There is a star shining in my chest
I plucked it out of the sky last night
No one can see it.