bone Lover as tree Lover as three long needles
entering your ear while receiving acupuncture at the Y.
 
Stretch blithely on this chair and soon what is invasive
turns to pleasant tingling. You will feel the burden
 
lifted from the gnarled network of your back. You will need
to sign a waiver. Lover as a sink in which you scrub
 
the soil from your hands, flakes of skin descend
as you exfoliate the closet at your friend’s where you slept
 
without your bra atop a bag of chips, woke with moon-shaped
bite marks on your shoulder blade. Your hands retain the smell.
 
One day Lover calls you Home. You never even knew you had a door.
Lover as cold sigh, Lover as wet ground in July which devours
 
feet so you shrink distinctively with each step. Lover wants to see
another sci-fi film but honestly you cannot bear one more man
 
-beast hybrid flashing fangs across the screen. You want
to teleport behind the monster, clamp his jaw, scream out
 
“ I will not be eaten! I am no one’s food!”
Lover as a dissertation on eighteenth century marriage politics
 
as demonstrated by Austen’s Emma. Lover as a poem scrawled
across a Denny’s bathroom stall condemning emptiness of sex.
 
“ In and out of me like you’re in the bedroom and then out the door.”
Spit up Lover in the toilet, slam the cover, flush. Like rain
 
the Lover does not disappear without return. Memories come
in waterfalls and droughts. Desperately you hunt for instances
 
you’ve shared, glossy back flushed across your bed.
When will Lover turn to soil and harden under snow,
 
splintered sprout recycled into ground.
Lurking tendrils of a voice you can’t recall
 
while scrubbing dishes in your empty home.