there was a time I kept the steak knives

on top of the bookshelf. I ate soft

 

things, finger foods. I kept dreaming

of opening my front door only to get

 

a priority mail package and a slashed

jugular. the packages were real: always

 

boxes of chocolate, the nearest major

holiday themed. always from my mother

 

with a complimentary note taped to the tin,

thin as a receipt. out the window, a baby

 

chain waddles across wet cement: furtive

steps, small galoshes, holding hands. careful,

 

careful. the rain picks up. it tells me a raccoon

wandered into the primate exhibit, tried

 

to free itself before being drawn and

quartered out of curiosity.

 

I tell the rain, that anecdote isn’t the kind

of good distraction my therapist told me

 

to engage in. it tries again, tells me there is a word

for the pope’s hat. I keep thinking cuticle but that

 

can’t be it. there’s a product women use to moisturize

their cuticles. it’s soft and smells of buttery lemon

 

zest, beeswax. I’m not the kind to use it. I will cut

my nails and send a photo of my dominant hand, as is

 

customary in lesbian courtship, when things get real.

I put the phone down and wait, think of the Amazon

 

review I like, the one that describes a pillow as a friend:

It also sits on its own. Next to you, if you want.

---

Originally from Merced, California, AC HARMON lives in Oakland. She attended St. Mary’s College of California for her MFA, completing it in June of 2018. Her poetry is often interested in themes of lesbian womanhood, misogyny, violence, mental health, animals, and mythology, and has been featured in Bay Area Generations #47.