.png)
and so I handed you a pen.
Write down all the things I’ve forgotten, I said,
and it dressed up to be rather long.
How many times have you gussied up
for both me and the skinny angel?
I was out like a train and we were unglued fairly quickly,
leaving such a mess on the floor.
Now without an ear to the door,
I can hear the falling in the hall.
Grabbing at cotton, you sank in my hand,
Squishing quiet into milk and water, a big goose egg,
heaps of nobody.
There is the last hair on the collar of my shirt,
pink and perfect.
I don’t think I will ever take it off.
It was the tongue of things, the weight of it.
The dirty mineral spirits that I kept in a jar
that stripped the paint off.
I proved crafty with a center saw,
and sipped soundly of matchbooks and lipstick,
too early for what time it was.
Now I wonder which way my watch points.
I think it still points south.
Kyle Hilbrecht, of Louisville, Ky., is a senior McConnell Scholar studying political science, Asian studies, and history.