my small breasts were gardenias
that you gathered in your hands,
a pale bouquet.

during the last years of his life ( Read more... )

walking back from your house ( Read more... )

cut through with the light of the day ( Read more... )

the day is heavy with heat. the sunshine lays across my body like a weight -- a pleasant weight, but one i can only enjoy for so long before going into the shade. bees buzz languidly, sensually around flowers, giving the day a lazy hum. barren ground and sunshine, palm trees slicked down, heavy with light. the continual jerky throat-call of a bird ( Read more... )

my grandfather died at 99. in his last weeks he shrunk from a man to a child. he lived in a grand old house in a beautiful wealthy old neighborhood, full of sweeping bougenvillia vines and rose gardens ( Read more... )

when i was seventeen i told my boyfriend i was ready to have sex. he was an ugly sort, with rings under his eyes he'd had since he was a baby. it made him look like a heroin addict, slightly romantic in a melencholy way, but mainly just strange. his body was not the kind of body i can imagine having sex with, retrospectively. but i suppose at the ( Read more... )