loss, n.

1.
a fireplace heats your head | & the first house you lived stretches | your memory your past | childhood | at night—

2.
you believed a fat man in a red suit brought you gifts

—despite | you lied to your mother seven times that year | despite—

you bit your tongue until the taste | to keep from spilling:

1. how a man in your best friend’s house asked you
2. to strip | you climbed | his shirtless | torso in your white under-
3. wear | the brown fur | in his stomach | the nipple
4. standing hard­—to your touch

† loss, v.

1.

how he unloads me:

discharge on the belly—

small whimper & my body

burning water

2.

vessel | &

wreckage |

swollen wood |