X Is Yellowing Down
by Paige Lewis
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losing his softness. He threatens to take all the air with him when he goes. I've never been much good at igniting tenderness, I often fight sad with worse sad, and using the bone of one whale to harpoon another isn't beautiful. Sensual—certainly not. Now hot-wristed, he claims glass-bottomed bridges last so long because courage is a dwindling human trait. I used to believe that if I was slapped hard enough my eyes would pop out. Believed too that a calculated hair tug could rear them back into their rightful sockets. X drags his latches toward me—a test to see if
I will unfasten. His bags are heavy with our garden's brightest stones because, he says, even the crows should be left with nothing. |
Paige Lewis is the author of the chapbook Reasons to Wake You (Tupelo Press, 2018). Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, Best New Poets 2017, and elsewhere.