I Never Want to Grow Civil War Old

There are so many ways to find your ending it’s like a choose your own adventure story or ordering off the value menu at McDonald’s. Lust is a metaphor for why the wind creases the trees into crooked poles, so I killed myself with a butter knife, buried myself under the linden tree you pressed me against those nights so long ago now lost, when you would unzip me from the neck down. You were there when I tunneled a hole through my chest, pressing the August heat against my spine as I tried to run from what has never chased me.

C. J. Miles lives in Iowa with his wife. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Forage, Moonglasses Magazine, Beech Street Review, Algebra of Owls, and SYNAPSE, among others. Follow him on Twitter at @cjmilespoet.