TAKING INVENTORY

12/11/2023

Like today I went to the bench.

And there were all the usual trampled cigarette butts but also

this time a broken blue flosser and it felt like some sick euphemism for sharing a teal Spirit in the dark. I keep looking behind us because I’m a goody-two-shoes

and your eyes are closed and soul music is playing so you’re tapping your foot against the iron arm, twisting your head around in my lap. The wind makes shapes

from your smoke. I try to catch them with my mouth. Can we talk it out? I have no more metaphors left.

12/24/2023

Please God let him be happy. I’ll do most anything for it.

12/25/2023

Dancing on your amp, full of tequila. Careful, you warn, but not much more

because it is so rare that I move like this. It is December so it we are safe until January and I am free and so I

dance.
(Then throw up in the morning and crawl back into your arms. We can smoke if you want to.)

I miss miss miss you. How else can I say it?

1/1/2024

Like three nights before,

when you had papers due and I was rereading Fangirl.

So we sat in the library side by

side quietly and after a while you reached over without speaking and took my hand, then

went back to writing your essay, now

one-handed. Impaired and grinning about it.

1/6/2024

You said we could go to Montréal for spring break.

1/9/2024

Earlier I saw you come up my driveway, loping really.

It wasn’t real, of course, but

it was still nice to watch you for a moment.

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Audrey Jiggetts, 18, Massachusetts - USA ✯ TT: @audgejig

“Audrey is spending this winter as an avid consumer of applesauce, boxer shorts, and (you guessed it) poetry. She hopes you punch something today for her.”