“Things we lose are usually underneath something else.” By Alexis Rhone Fancher

“Things we lose are usually underneath something else.” -Benette R .

1.
I dream there is hair in my food.

In the morning, my lover says, “Yes, there’s
a long hair in every dish you feed me.”

A strand of myself in every serving –
and he eats it like a condiment.

2.
“Looks like the same m.o.,”
the detective says, examining our broken
pane, bent screen. “He likes you
long-haired girls.”

3.
I find myself alone in the kitchen, eating
rice I don’t remember cooking.

4.
When was the last time we had any fun?”
my lover sighs.

5.
I mean, who are we when we
enter the Jacuzzi, and who are we
when we emerge?

6.
I dream there is food in my hair.
And gum. And a switchblade.

7.
“For the vast majority of people,”
my mother said, just before she died,
“The thing that’s going to kill you
is already on the inside.”

First published in decomP.

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Plume, Rattle, Diode, Rust & Moth, Nashville Review, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She is the author of How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen and other heart stab poems,(2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), and Enter Here (2017). A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly.
http://www.alexisrhonefancher.com

Art, Dis-Integration, by Jenn Zed. Used by permission.