“I was beautifully
composed for another, but I could
barely hear my metronome”

“I saw myself in someone else, and felt less alone in the world”

“Jason and I are led upstairs by this man, our father, or papi”

“I still end up hugging him when he opens his arms before disappearing again”

“My body holding life instead of bleeding it out a week late”

“and then suffocating together in one mass sleep”

“it was like trying to push a pancake through a chain link fence”

“Did I want to pack hard or soft? Silicone?”

“make pretend ashes out of burned photographs of him”

“we are all of us, once we’ve drawn first breath, dying”

“hiss and wheeze then silent for four years until”

“Home in a way geography does not understand”

“A teenaged soldier pointed his rifle at us just after we passed a steaming volcano”

“he couldn’t bear to return to jail for unpaid child support”

“my father decided to end his life, in a Best Western motel off the highway”

“remember when we were roommates of Despair?”

“He would die soon if I didn’t get him out.”

“just a feeling of not knowing what just happened to me”

“he kind of slithered out of his jeans”

“I contracted the virus back when I was a casual IV drug user”