In the morning you tell stories
of the things they cut from you,
her finger tests the fault line
of a scalpel's tooth mark
You see a snow drift laid out
where her body is, the quiet flowers
of a spring tundra planted
neat in place of areolae –
perfect, you call it, and white,
hands marking clumsy
corrugations on ice
In the morning you tell stories
that sound like metaphors –
how you miss the lump
in your chest – while beside you
on a sofa bed, in the downstairs room
of a friend, a pale form thrums
with the pulse of an engine
struggling to start in the cold
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