the willing

❝WE MANAGE MOST WHEN WE MANAGE SMALL Managing as thin light on water. Managing only greetings and farewells. We love a little, as the mice huddle, as the goat leans against my hand. As the lovers quickening, riding time. Making safety in the moment. 

❝KIN for Bailey, Shielding meaning from the big ears   Of overcurious adults. (...) I hear again the laughter    Of children and see fireflies   Bursting tiny explosions in    An Arkansas twilight.

❝WIDOW That is the fear she has —the fear his soul may beat and be beating at her dull sense Like blue Mary's angel, dovelike against a pane Blinded to all but the grey, spiritless room It looks in on, and must go on looking in on

❝THE FINAL GIRL (...) call him my killer, our killer. To distinguish him from the killers other (...) have faced, ostensibly. But there's a peculiar sort of ownership there—my killer. The killer who sought to kill me and failed. The killer who killed me, and no one seems to realize I'm dead. My killer.

❝THE DAUGHTER (...) I unfurl the ribbon of her life, and it's a smooth long hallway, doors flung open. Her surface is a deflection is why. Harm on her, harm on us all. Inside her, my grit and timbre, my reckless.

❝WINTER FEAR Is it just winter or is this worse. Is this the year when outer damp obscures a deeper curse that spring can't fix, when gears that turn the earth won't shift the view, when cloud won't lift though all the skies go blue.