take a bow.

perhaps I should not admit how

many times I read the words you 

doled out like cookies 

to a family dog: 

here, sit while I neglect 

your adoration, stay while I repeat the 

patterns that have worn grooves 

in my brain, come to me, come

to me while I dangle affection like 

a delicacy you will never 

place in your hands, let alone between

your soft lips

and there is truth, whether it finds you 

sulking in a corner, or

hunts you down within the 

chapters of a book, because

truth finds us all, in the end

I will never be the monsters who 

abandoned you, I will never be the 

scornful wasp that stung when 

you were convinced that you were trying, 

and I will never be the loving 

woman who brings you coffee and a pastry 

while you sleep late on a Saturday morning,

no matter how hard I long to be 

this story is not really about you

these words are about my willingness to lie 

in the dirt and wait for permission 

to leave, the urgency I feel to restore 

beauty to broken things, the desire 

I use to weld pieces of cold metal together to 

construct a pair of loving arms 

that don’t push me away

jagged little pills.

the wreckage has been surveyed

many times over, an itinerary carefully

deleted, line by resonant line

the dark ring inside yesterday’s porcelain

cup left on the kitchen

counter, diluted bourbon on

the bedside table next to the Ativan

when did we learn that love was

currency, attention meager

crumbs for starving

beasts, when did we misplace our

own fragile beauty with remnants

of shattered hope and reconstructed

dishes, following each tragedy

you divert your eyes but demand

to be seen, cry out but desire

solitude behind walls you built, but

they will not keep you safe from the

ghosts you have protected

within your rib cage, the terror that

runs you until shadows swallow hard

© 6.22.2017 heather brager

Rafael Duarte Más.

windsor street.

as I stoop to pick up a 

tarnished penny, time collapses

I am a funeral’s pace, fingers slowly 

scraping the pavement,

hair falling forward in a 

fluid motion, gently

stroking the back of 

my freckled hand

from behind my eyes I 

am watching, blurred sparrows stealing 

crumbs from beside the curb, a bus stop

woman fanning herself with a 

crumpled magazine, I am

peering across the baked-hot parking lot at 

myself, an anonymous woman, lost 

and still losing, a little girl finding

a treasure among discarded

wrappers, next to an empty whiskey bottle

© 6.20.2017 heather brager

your lexicon.

my heart is unraveling  

the symbiosis, while you

are writing a melody

in the shape of endings with

words resonating to the corners

slipping through hidden

cracks in the foundation

meeting my humid dawn

with nothing at all. 

© 6.13.2017 heather brager

edit, ad nauseam.

 

oh lover, please

domesticate this lonely

little ego

she’s been waiting

for your hands and

your fingers

to become

tangled in her hair

she’s been waiting

up late into

each night, aching

for your

admiration

your shimmering,

silver tongued

praise

please, take this

scantily clad poem

in all of its

vulnerable nakedness

slide it slowly across

your tongue

licking

every

last

word away

oh, sweet amylase,

this malaise

reduces her to

a complex technical

process

© 6.5.2017 heather brager

Julia Randall.