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.
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