Louisa Diodato
With no clean clothes to wear, I was inclined to answer you honestly. You showed me how your palms could open white as a lotus, and in my stomach the layers of a cabbage separated; my mouth filled with aphids. The neighbors loved one another on their porch and we waved back. We shelved the backyard railing with flower pots and the fractals growing inside collapsed in on themselves. The sky hollowed and bats began to orbit the floodlights. When your mother called, the telephone fell open, spilling its soil. We grew tomatoes in the kitchen sink. We had the doors and windows removed for summer and we filled our bed with new leaves. The swallows built their nest in my navel, and you held your mouth open for a long time while the titmouse went out to gather materials. We lived for a long time this way. Love, when I held your hand we touched bone to bone, and that was how they found us.