alterations

have you thought about lying?

I laughed a yes

squeezing lemon

into my paper cuts

and the soup she'd made us,

thinking now about

the decades we'd clumsily spent

outgrowing secrecy. 

the need for it left smoldering

in that unattended 4am ashtray, 

dry of reward.

to travel so far inward

only to return outside.

a möbius strip.

no residue of guilt now

in all this casual fiction

just the low hum of kindness

and grief.