Darling, Please Flatten Me With the Volvo

A Contagious Age

DEAR ________ : I WANT TO BE A BETTER FRIEND, I’M SORRY

You put your hand on my neck and
whisper that if you were here you would

sew me a telephone. But you
are here, I say, and then you walk

to the door. I follow your shadow past
my mother’s gun-filled aquarium and

meet you on the porch where we watch a
slow wreck occur on the highway. The colliding

metal makes a severity of noises and we stand
admitting our own heroic transgressions

without ever discussing who let the neighbor’s
kid unbury the body. When it’s finally

dark enough to move in poor focus, you
saddle my shoulders with soldered toy

soldiers and ride me to the crash site so one of us
can flirt with the medical examiner about unsanitary

stock market projections. Nobody has enough
loose rope or batteries but the signs we’ve

made hold firm under the weight of your aging
chest. Lost in the panic we are ravenous

trumpets, mouths swelling like boxcars
to blow hard scissors and oil.