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I never felt heart stop or skin burn, just the first split second of sound.

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

She only eats condiments, pickles, slices of sharp cheddar.

I try to believe that even when cords are cut or people die we connect.

Two surgeons vaulted over a counter to hold open my incisions.

My first true love was Underwood, my mother’s typewriter.

Men came over carrying lanterns and pulled away the chunks of ice.

Let me lie down with you and listen, let me tell you what I know.

She takes her hand to my scalp: eyes close as if tasting lemon cake.

Tanya jokes that she comes to the East Coast now only for funerals.

Turns out my body’s a dollar sweet potato, her screen said.

ursula says she’s seen everyone she loves in an apple, save herself.

When the population was whiter, they fawned over the Korean.

He’d always wanted to kiss her thigh dimples but never dared.

“No, no,” we say. “We’re fine! Really! We love things just the way they are!”

I remember speaking to Allison who asked me if I wanted to be a girl.

They rose before us under a halo of lights like figures in a shrine.

What I really meant to say is that I am tired. Beauty can demand so much.

Once, when young and proud, I tried to grasp the enormity of the past.

She fell out of her own composition, fell and landed flat on her face.

If Vann kisses her, a mist will rise in her brain. A promise of oblivion.

You smile into the phone static, the breath of your beloved.

The future was spread out for us to go in any direction we wanted.

All my life I wondered what it is to vanish like a ring of smoke.

Rain falls steadily, rattling down drainpipes and gurgling into gutters.

Ella knew she hadn’t hurt Sebastian, but she knew she’d betrayed him.

“Wanna give it a go?” my brother asks, nudging me with his 12-gauge.

Her husband is away at the family cabin, and she is glad for the space.

The guy from the funeral home can’t get the gurney into the house.