Poetry

Sober House Love

When she moved in she
got assigned top bunk
She said she was 42 and never kissed a woman, cleared her throat and repeated herself
She tasted like Taaka vodka
and God knew I needed a
new alcoholic mommy
We passed her last Camel Crush back and forth between kisses,
a reborn Christian and a nobody.
The only God is between her legs
I parted her thighs and the tinny taste of her period-pussy was heavenly, her coppery pubes like wiring short-circuiting my brain.
She prays for strength to end
our love, but my fat breasts and buttocks have bewitched her.
“You’re killing me.”
She said it like a curse
over breakfast, like I was the worst thing to happen to her.
Jenny, if God doesn’t care you abandoned your kids to smoke meth and turns tricks in a casino parking lot, do you think he cares you saw me naked
and liked it?
She said this at Denny’s, solemn as a sermon,
like it was God’s house.
Like God is a waitress asking how I want my eggs cooked
or a stoned dishwasher with
half a Marlboro tucked behind his ear.
If our love is killing her,
let it.
I’ve seen the yawning empties in her trunk and God shuts up about that.
If our love kills us,
let it be in this bunk bed.