I can’t feel much
Thinking of you after midnight.
Her warm and inky moon, the
ink is a dark grease, the pencils
made with animal fat and soot
Like the ones I use to printmake.
I’ve burnt (almost) everything
you said over text that evening,
inhaling the fumes as if I were baking
a fruitcake with sweet cherries and orange peel.
Yet your words don’t smell like incense.
They are acrid and burnt black.
Tangled hair and wet pillowcases —
I’m a withering romantic.

I used to wish I had letters in your handwriting,
so I could store them in a small jewelry box
from my childhood, with hand-painted
plump and rouged rose hips, they looked like
blushing cheeks.
But I have no such fondness for analogue times
anymore,
no such longing for your drawn mark.
I think you wanted to be an artist,
but I’m scared to say I knew you well enough.
I’m afraid my romance will terrify you.

I used to cry for things lost, lost
between my soft sheets.
The body I knew you wanted
and hoped you dreamed of
glossed over with grief for a few weeks.
But now that it has subsided, I feel such a way.
Morally devalued by result of printing,
it’s a democratic medium!
While I editioned my lithograph,
I thought of all the times

I had submitted to the process.
Do you think I enjoy the lovers
I have before and after you?