I Put Tasks I Do for Free into a Folder Titled “Jobs”
There are not enough hours in the day before I have to perform affection.
That’s an objectively robotic thing to say, my therapist tells me, when I speakabout my responses to sentimentality.
My weekly battle with the laser printer—a kind of intimacy, my pleading.
I don’t want your flashing red light, I say, telling me you won’t go.
I wear shoes I found on a sidewalk. That must mean something, my feetbathed in the ghost of someone else’s feet.
When Cynthia, the taller and much-older cousin, looked under the deckand saw that the baby birds in the nest had their heads bitten off, I screameduntil someone inevitably told me to stop.
I’ve always been this sensitive, hands clapped over my ears.
A pure emotion, like thread…
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The American Poetry Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, March/April 2022