Stepping Stones Magazine

Bind me fine in the other side of the mirror
for seven years. Break the glass so I can’t escape

the realm where loss is what you make it, where the man
you slept with once or tried to plant a kiss on sideways

could be your shepherd, if you wanted. And I do, I want
back every seventies High Times cover on the wall,

every aging olive-tin lying tongue-out on the floor
where we sat because it was cold and the dogs barked

through our fingers because they knew our kind,
because even though I never stayed till the other side

of night on the flannel heater, on stale sheets, I keep flecking
at this unscabbed sore, this chipped tooth that never

snapped. And I know who got the short half of a smoke
on the bed. It was me, not the window that didn’t shut.

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