on guilt.

They say all I write about is guilt. That I got river veins so deep all they pump is guilt. That I mine for melancholy in myself and those I keep company with. When we met it was nothing but aftermath. Sometimes on Sundays I see things very clearly because I am forced to be alone and to write at this desk. I keep on writing stories that tangle notions of sex with violence and death. Sometimes there are stories I’ve told so many times I have convinced myself they are real– like the summer before I moved when you took your hand to my face in that shit hole apartment off Lyndale. Did that ever really happen? or did I write it? I have to dig out photographs for proof sometimes. that and everything else. I read this piece by this pretty poet last week where someone had told her we only hold onto the things that hurt, something about how we process them, process life. I don’t know anything about that. what I do know is that I’m fixing myself up to barter what’s left, maybe it will be enough to pay your rent.