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​More than anything

I used to wish for barrenness: no human cadence cutting my shadow like Rachel or Elizabeth.
Annoying things—building messes, crying for ice cream or hugs and crawling sideways across the waxed wood

& reaching the spider eyeing them under the couch before shrieking. I used
to say I hope I never get them. There is enough of me in me. Enough of the past where it is. I used to pray

for a complicated disease, not too unspeakable, but feminine enough to take my chances
so I wouldn’t go back on my wish, & I wanted to be sick for other reasons, too, but they’re not

important now. The last night we go to dinner at a place that looks like stairs to a wet basement & you order
for me, chicken scaloppini, & I’m staring down

my clouded cheeks in the scratched brackish mirror that supposes me
Hellenistic in dimmed 20 watt, a pulsing grip on the beveled handle that could give hot or cold.

I wanted meat & bones, a shank, ossobucco, something I could tear
that might leave a puddle of more than white

sauce dripping with left over Riesling that sugar-masks the last dish. I could be holding
someone deep in me, an unformed idea, a moment

that hasn’t happened because we’re careful.

And I’m aware of how late it’s pressing, a 9 PM dinner to accommodate flight delays.
Greetings always last too long. The beginning--always more interesting than the end, you’re here.



Molly Lurie-Marino 's works have appeared in PANK, Chronogram, and Metazen. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA where she is a student at Duquesne University.
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