Kasandra Larsen

Burning the Paperwork

He turns the wheel with his thumb until flame
just threatens to come up, miniature blue sun
that lights laminated greasy thoughts on fire

with a pop and fizz inside their honeymoon suite,
messed-up bed a testament to eternities they
could have led instead of torching notarized

documents. He smoked her cigarettes after
he supposedly quit; she holds the lighter to her palm
but still her hands freeze, though her fingers

each turn black with soot. She wants to touch it
to the hem of her skirt, see feminine identification
flare into swirling ribbons as their bare toes

wiggle in dirt and promises rise up and twist
into an ashy mist, mingling with bits of melted
sealing wax and signatures that crackle in the air.

The Hoarder Writes Home

You asked how I started; it was with fish
with missing fins, torn tails, orange,
scaly, deformed. Sometimes they’d jump
out of the canals toward me.

I took them home, of course,
and over time
all manner of strays made their way.

Between the stacks of historical newspapers
I had at least a hundred cats,
caged only to keep them
from eating each other.

Bars are protection for all of us. I’ve learned that.

Later, when the daily tasks of cleaning
and feeding, tending to wounds and
bloodletting became too much,

I was unaware. Your father came out of nowhere.
I plunged my hands
into his hair.

His hair, all over — so much I nearly bent
to sweep it up and keep it –

and even
when I stumbled out the door, torrents
of worms pulsing through me, roiling
my intestines, pouring out

of my mouth, slim and black and snaky,
fat white grubs in moist knots
of blind writhing, searching for homes
of their own,

he still held me, gently filled each exit hole,
touched me with a healing
understanding I had never known.

When you were born, though
you were screaming and covered in rashes, I held you.
I had no fear of poison like that,

and when it was time I put you
back in the tank. Later, years later, after
I’d misplaced

even your father’s bones, the house stank, but
it was the filthy smell of love.

No guard here
will touch me like that, and the ants
I share this dinner with aren’t
company enough.

 

Solved Equation for a Shared Silence

The length of your crossed legs divided by the time
it takes my eyes to travel up to their divide equals
the total of planted seeds deposited by breathing
through the phone, its indivisible and negative holes
for both my mouth, your ear, the distance between
which is roughly proportionate to the difference
between the sums we never make in public plus
the sounds we’d multiply if you were here.