My memories are hollowed out
a cloth kept in a moth-filled closet
disintegrating at the barest brush of light:
the pulsating pupae breaking out.
At five I discovered
a swimming pool for drowning on the weekends.
Women’s murders unsolved on television channels.
Bathroom lights dancing to the beat of the ground,
tequila, salt, lime on endless loop.
Turning a losing twenty-one
the impersonal email announcing my grandmother’s passing
no invitation to a funeral, that or any others.
Alienation: separation, ache,
a badly set bone that stings with the changing weather.