Kin

my mother taught me
that a woman is someone who leaves. to be a filial
good daughter, i turn the same. raise myself alone
at sundry street corners. take anything,
and grow up flighty. tomorrow,
i decide to flit. rent a fiat from
the town junkyard, hook up with a mechanic
to get it going. leave for a world swallowed.
i drive drinking fireballs, and take swigs
off the scent of broken leather. smoke through a box,
cigarettes i’ve picked from roads and lovers: bad habits are hard to quit.
at the night shift, i sleep face down with frogs
and wash away like dirt, no skin left—
then every morning, back to the start and finish.
that’s that. at a specific second, i stop
at a gas station between the carolinas.
the clink of spoons and knives,
cologne as a mask for breathing and bad jokes, i’m here
to meet people that want to live so badly,
they’re hoping to die. everything around is
kind, unfamiliar. i can pretend loveliness.
i have sex that night, to a man with a blue cadillac
who wore oxfords without socks and let the shoe cuff
dig his achilles, as if he wants to sever. met and mated,
dogs in heat scouring for flesh. afterwards,
in his nice apartment, his clean kitchen, he cooks
orange slices and roast pig and baby’s breaths
and saffron and bird’s nests, seared instead of steamed.
while he sets the dishwasher, i scratch my initials
into the underbelly of his table.
the thought of me will stay and straggle, in every moment after the fact.
even when i’m back in the fiat, driving with no holding back,
i linger. in this world, i choose to exist.
that is everything and nothing,
i suppose.