Every sad thing is piled between us
as we sit on the living room floor—
photographs and memories scarred but not faded,
a corsage from senior prom pressed between pages.
You tell me to take what I want without saying,
“There’s more where they came from.”
You want to do this amicably. “It’s better that way,” you say.
“Cheaper, too.”
The lawyer’s card in my back pocket has bear trap teeth.
He made a pass at me, said “Freedom is better than you think.”
But you don’t know I’ve seen him,
nor can you see the anvil crushing my breastbone.
Instead, you lift a photo from the heap like it’s a butterfly.
Smiling you ask, “Remember this?”
Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State, an editor at the online magazine Literary Orphans, and the author of I’m Not Supposed to Be Here and Neither Are You, out now from Unknown Press. You can also find him at http://lenkuntz.blogspot.com.
