Although I’m twenty-five, and in my prime,
you will not meet me for a second date.
Nothing will make you fuck me one more time.

Blue is the evidence of what I do,
the lies I’ll leave behind, no more, no less.
This is the past, and so it must be true.

how softly one is seduced by whispers.
Take notice, when leafing through, say, a Calvino novel,
of all of the pages gone blank

Jealousy. Whispered weather reports.
The lure of the land so strong it prompts
gossip: we chatter like small birds

Already Judah Street awaits the rain
of streetcar-whine down avenues of rain—
the snap of black umbrellas, the falling coin.

Just its fur was moving.
With a snare, they lifted it
and sealed it in a garbage bag.

I want to take
responsibility, to say I made it hard—
I only made it hard for him specifically.

He will teach me how to seduce
Men, stags, double-winged angels

Why, before I jumped over, did I
                crouch down to stare
                                between the bars of the ninth-floor railing

Assembling unsheathed cloves of garlic
                on the butcher block,
                                shuffling through them