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This Tendency Is Now Familiar to Us
When I apologize I am asserting dominance
We define ourselves by what we believe
We cannot be
If I was stabbingly in love with being loved
I can barely remember
You are a flower
While I am the slug
Eating that flower
When love ends someone has failed
It’s real failure
A warrior in the grass
Why do we say “It didn’t work out”
That seems athletic
We should say something else
Or be cinematically quiet
Red sash on our leg
Get on and off the bus
With the world nodding at our black
Hearts
A lot of mornings left brittle
A trick for the drain is boiling water
Fast results and little effort
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Emily Kendal Frey is the author of the chapbooks Airport (Blue Hour, 2009), Frances (Poor Claudia, 2010), The New Planet (Mindmade Books, 2010) and the forthcoming Baguette (Cash Machine, 2013), as well as four chapbook collaborations. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she hosts The New Privacy reading series.
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photo: momthebarbarian / flickr