License
In traffic, you ask me if I checked
the organ donor box. Basil blooms out
of my carelessness. I forget to pick the chives.
I think of your body still lengthening, free
of visible blemishes save the single scar,
fainter now, forehead to table the week
before I married, how after the dog licked
up your blood, I’ve doubted everything but
your limbs. At night, you sling me all the tea:
texts sent, timed out, Grandma telling
you your body is beautiful, but
your shorts are too short. Light filters
through the self-portrait above the piano,
your face all angles. Mold festers green
in the glass I left on the stoop. You tell
me you’d want me to know who took your
heart, your slate-gray eyes. Whole forests die
for less than this. In the morning we stop to pull
a fawn from the road and walk back to the car.
You ask if you can drive me home, and I say yes.