THINGS I REGRET. A professor. My love. Another professor. Her caste. Two countries. Not sure which one. Not eating on time. Not doing sprints. The girl in the street I broke a wind chimer of. Hotel rooms. Not raising voice. Vaccines but unrecognised....

    i collect items left behind by ex-boyfriends as if they are souvenirs i count myself lucky and hold my breath in the shower to practice peace on days that feel like a blister i know somewhere children are laughing and you are folding your favourite pair...

      Kleptomaniac  Lover, all my life I've been lightfingered to the nth degree finagling what wasn't mine, some rings and lipstick, once a dress her sun-drained hair, a hidden glance two books I loved yet never read family heirlooms, happiness (all...

    THE CHILD BECOMES A PARENT She comes bearing gifts and apologies Giving love out of guilt From my days as an embryo, I knew her Whispers in my phone past bedtime Climbing through the window past curfews Teenage angst and my insecurity shows 'I hate you,...

      Lifesaving practice We make a strange creature, him and I. Father and son, endlessly enacting death and resurrection in the local pool. Locked in an awkward embrace, my back forever to his front. My heart balancing on his heart; smooth wet pebble...

    morphine the first time i drank morphine a weight slid over my heart   & the whole summer collapsed under me   my head packed with ice phone overflowing with garbled texts   & all because of this vertebra   a firecracker in a...

      Out nights were forest with foliage too dense to let in the light of moon and stars – and days were savannah   prairie   steppe – glory and danger in strangeness of mountain and sea and river – survival was tracking the flock to the watering hole...

      A Talkative Saint who lived in a hedge He was caught up in what he did and he couldn’t do enough of it and he did it all the time. He would talk about it to anyone even if they told him they couldn’t understand a word of it and didn’t want to...

      I’m crying in a bar when a wise old cowboy turns to me and says If you found love now, you’d run it right into the ground. I bet you sit around swallowing up everybody else’s light, wondering why you never end up being anything but midnight. I...