from To People Who Sometimes Read

My duplicating assertions are only for liars. I have told fifty-two men that I loved them but I’ve only meant it once. Maybe it’s because I am in season this year. Or that my willful interior has been zipped down and revealed inside-out. It’s likely that I have no history. That my traces have been erased, along with the paper kept in my desk slot all through grade school. Those times I crawled in bark and didn’t notice my knees scabbing, lifted my body, swung over the bars to test my flexibility as a trellis of attention. I keep flinging myself forward and falling upside down, which is partly why I do headstands everyday: to reiterate stability. Certainty comes with eating lunch outside, surrounded by pinecones, and my certain love’s hand in my lap.