Pete
Pete leans into me the way a girl bends over a banister to see her sleeping child she thought was dead. He leans into me the way flowers tilt with panic after being blinded by mud. His face doesn’t touch mine but I can feel its heat coming at me like broken glass. His shoulder lacks flesh but I love its bird-like sadness. When I say cheese, my mouth doesn’t form a smile. When you hang up a child’s picture of a bird, some of the glitter falls off. Why can love feel like this—a gradual depreciation of flesh as it nears bone? Dreams are the sharp shock of wire on metal. An open door and the triangle of light that forces through. 