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switchblade serenade. The first time he told me he didn't dream at night was the first time I realized that I was suspicious of him as a human being. Still standing here outside his window, looking at him asleep, I was reminded of my compulsion towards him, wondering

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if I could insert myself into his night mind his hand cupping his cock, his tattoo of his wife's initials on his shoulder. He was all mistake, an entitlement small yet taking up a lot of space. I could make out his body held by the sheets, the

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way one ft was exposed, his head tucked too deeply into his chest. I thought about the energy it would take to write his head so that he wouldn't snore so loudly. I craned my neck to scan the table for his See BDs. Wondering how deep he

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was into a world that was as empty as the hillsides I had walked along to get here. When we met, we were just kids, scuffed knees and braids. I have been living in the heat of the suburbs a few stories up in an apartment building built

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of carpet and microwave. He came from the country rode in on his bike like it was a pony, threw rocks at my window. He had seen me looking out, pressing my hand against the moths that crawled sideways against the glass towards my bedroom light. He barely

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had time to motion for me to come down and join him under the streetlight. When we got face to face, I saw right away that he had a crooked grin. We rode his bike to the graveyard, sat on tombstone, sharing gum, him looking at my legs.

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It was the beginning of a pattern, him looking until I felt compelled to show more. Opening my shirt, he squeezed my non existent breast. Just the nipple, the same as his butt squeezed it till I winced. I punched his arm later that night was when he

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told me he didn't dream, and for years I wondered about the containment of dreams that maybe he was living his out in real time, that his life was such that he didn't have to harbor an unlived life beneath the sheets. Behind closed eyes in silence, I

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moved around to the front of the house, my hand in my dress pocket, the heaviness of the knife weighing down on soft material. The way it fingered a hole in the seam made me feel grounded, like I was a part of this world. His tools were

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scattered across the deck. I let my bare foot rub the length of the mallet. Sometimes he had told me when he was most angry, he would slam blocks of pavement, delighting in the sound of wreckage. When we were 16, he had delighted in the sound of

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me. I was wreck and slam quiet, yet hungry the way he held me up in the hallways after school, whispering that I belong to him. I hadn't really thought of myself as property before then, but there were some romantic as well as practical notions involved in

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being owned that were appealing. For one, it would be a respite from the football team. It would also mean that someone loved me enough to claim me to draw a line around my body. two Piss away predators and abandonment. When he said it, when he had

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me by the throat and whispered, You are mine, a small gas would escape that he would lick off my lips, he told me that he loved getting me pregnant The way I became full one part him and one part me. When he picked me up from

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the Clinic two counties over, I had leaned across the bucket seats of his car with a mascara smeared face to place my hand on his inner leg. Very lately, I felt him brush it away. Now, with my hand on his door, I felt another boundary, one

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of wood and knob built by him. Yet I could feel myself so effortlessly sail through to arrive in his kitchen, where he used to feed me meat. I walked over to the counter. I did not need light or pause. I laid the switch blade on the

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cutting board stained with blood. I pulled the other knives from the wall mount, admiring the curve of the boning blade. The cleaver, which seemed cliche given the circumstance, the paring knife that I had borrowed while canning nectarines. I let myself bound down to listen to them,

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for one of my abilities is to hear the stories of knives they sing right out of their blades. A cut of birdsong, the cleaver moaned, guttural of cracking bone, the paring knife crescendoed to the removal of soft flesh. And yet it was the switchblade that sung

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the loudest of all the knives, and tonight it sung the song of the first time he cut me. I had been straddling him in the grass of his family's ranch, reading a poem he had written for me. My hair was short. A messy cut was only

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24, wearing combat boots and a bomber jacket. He had been playing with my necklace, a small shell on twine, wrapping it around his fingers, tugging it against my neck. When I was done reading, he told me that I was more beautiful than any poem he could

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ever right. My eyes grew big and I bit my lip excited. Are you truth telling? I demanded. Sure, he said, laughing. I reached back to his boot beneath my body, pulled his knife from his sock and released the blade, holding it to his throat and mock

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anger. Tell me the truth, I whispered. He leaned up, kissing me hard, gently taking the knife from my hand. He released my neck and took my arm, keeping his eyes locked on mine. I knew not to look down. I knew what he was going to do

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and that I was expected not to wince. This time. He cut the incision on the softest part of my arm, tracing my iron with his carbon steel, then raised the wound to his lips. He drank from me, and I thought this meant I was prettier than

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any poem he knew. But really, now that I was in his kitchen listening to the knives of his home, I understood. It only meant that he had cut me. Of course, boys don't know north from south, and they wander away on bikes with faster wheels. The

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older they get. I was left in that shitty town that smelled like walking meat and slur. Before he left, I had stolen his knife, kept it in a box he had carved for me to swallow tails like those tacky roses that everyone has those tattoos. But

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he made them look pretty like they were driving out of the wood. He knew I didn't want what everyone had, but he gave it to me anyways, always making it pretty. I pushed the bedroom door open with my breasts. His clothes on the floor smelled like

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ash and fish Like he was one part campfire and one part swimming hole. I walked past his sleeping form into his bathroom to suck on his toothbrush. I could taste that fancy toothpaste, the one flavored with a niece. I looked into the shower, the place where

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he had called me from sending me pictures like he couldn't even get dressed without needing me. The soap. He lathered himself well, telling me we were one all one. It was a long drive down a straight shot of a highway to meet him at the estuary.

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My red car sleepy with age and diesel. When I parked, I saw the water had flooded so high a baby cow had got stuck in the reeds, her little stiff legs all straight and hooked, her bloated belly lapped against by the salted water. I just stood

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there watching her as he closed in behind me. I could feel his warmth on my back, wrapping his hands around my throat, me confusing my lack of breath for love. He loved me so hard. I dropped to my knees, tasted grass in my eyes, saw my

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nose bleed the banner of his lust as my tooth cracked against his steel toed boots, two ft and a body, I was sky bound then and low again. I saw him rolling me down to the edge of the bank, the way he tipped me over with

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his foot, his hands in his pockets, that stuck with me. How casual the whole affair looked couldn't quite tell if it was an accident or like they say on TV. Premeditated. It didn't feel casual, though it felt like death. My pink dress spread like a valentine

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around my body. My hair seeped against the algae and like a magnet, I was pulled towards that baby domestic bovine, my arms catching my own bloat in the cold of night. When I opened my eyes, I saw craw dads crawling up my legs. I could feel

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my lungs filling with water like I was in utero breathing but drowning. I could see blood swirling around my face. My eyelashes had grown in the night. My hair turned white. At the bottom of the river floor sat the skull and the ribs of the baby

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cow when I dragged myself back up out of the estuary, clinging to acidic mud and cow ship. It was the feeling of drowning that remained. It felt as if the entire world was caught in the deepest part of my lungs. And no matter how hard I

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coughed, I could not release the world. Both our cars gone, the pullouts overgrown with blackberry, bramble and hemlock. I walked down that highway of perpetual night, coughing and spitting up blood for two years. Made a car crash now and then. No fatalities, but mostly watch Children

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watching me, their faces turning towards the edge of headlights, seeing my dress drenched through me, cursing them, pervert pervert through bloodied teeth. I spent a few years in the cow fields. I would nurse off the mamas cow's teats, watching the milk twist and turn through my

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organs, catching my bladder and then leak between my legs. I would crawl onto the bone of the cows back, wrap my arms around her thick neck, wipe the flies from her eyes. Owls would screech above us as I rode her through the fields as close to

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a lullaby as I could remember. Spent some time in a diner with a flashing neon sign. Waitresses heavy with dyed red hair and cracked knuckles. I kept to the restroom, sniffing handprints on the bathroom stalls stalls I could smell the toddlers down low arms snatched by

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paranoid mama's clutching diaper wipes higher up a drunk teenager grasping for balance, one hand on each side, smelling like Peach Schnapps Higher up on the Wall. People slam bodies during the two AM shift before or after burgers quaking the whole establishment through pleather mini skirts and

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unzipped coveralls. I never did get to see it as long as I was there, people would walk in, take pause, avoid looking in the mirror and walk right out. I sighed deeply, my bare feet on the cool tiles of highway lower. Did you know that most

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women are murdered by someone that they know? It's true? I don't want to get into all the statistics with you, and I'm not trying to act like I'm smart or some part of a trend. But I have to tell you, once someone murders you, you have

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to wonder if you ever really knew them. Not only that, but from this side it looks like there are a lot of ways you can die like sometimes it's not even your whole body. Little pieces of you die off disappear, go missing. When I was walking

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that highway, I saw all sorts of body parts floating past a pair of lips belonging to a child. After being told to shut up the bottom, lip trembling, A whole side of a woman got caught on a 35mph sign right out of town, curved and plush,

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dead from being told her body was fat and ugly. For two whole days, I could not shake this stranger's heart. It just floated right along beside me, the aorta old, jagged and raggedy from being pulled out from someone's chest. You could see the bruises of meanness

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on it, the places and it had a trophy blue. Sure, I have bloody cracked teeth and eyelashes caked with water fleas, but at least I had my feet. I didn't have to float, but I could. I could float right up next to him, and I did

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let my body hug are over his, the water dripping from my dress. He rolled to his back, still asleep, his pretty little throat exposed, my drippings pulling in his sheets. It's true what they say he pissed right on himself like a baby. I let myself get

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real close to his face. I can see that little boy who pinched me. The one who cut me The one who got me pregnant and rode out of town like he didn't know me The man who came back to treat me like trash I licked his

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lips just to see what that crooked grin tasted. Lake. It tasted like the moment before you scream because I am pretty or dead than any poem you'll ever right His eyes opened and I pulled out my knife No. Yeah, yeah.