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crime scene investigation

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When I start drawing chalk outlines on the driveway and trying

to fit my body into them, you’ll know it’s time to leave.

The police won’t even have to drape the yellow crime scene tape

over the pavement, because they’ll already have been warned

that my body needs to be handled gently.

For years I’ve been trying to collect enough of my sorrow

to knit into a sweater, but I’ve run out of needles

because I’ve been using the vast majority of them

to carve the word lonely into my wrists over and over again.

Once my grandmother sewed me a quilt

made out of my grandfather’s ghost, and we lit the house

with the candles of his absence.

They burned brighter than a propane tank

bursting into flames with the touch of a single fallen cigarette.

Even now I find myself peeking in strangers’ windows,

hoping I can catch a glimpse of him there,

but it’s always me I see in those mirrors,

the kind of girl who turns her bruises into bracelets

that she can cover up the scars on her wrists with.

Sometimes I’m tempted to call the police

and inform them there’s been a home invasion,

but then I realize that there is no intruder

if the intruder hasn’t been alive in years.


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