all you have is the inside of a tent

a wide red meadow, and this  

is the first poem in which i don’t try 

to convince you of anything

you were here so recently 

i’m eating our leftovers. blood’s

on my sheets, mostly smudges from 

where my hands fell after the holy moment 

but there, too, dropped from 

your body directly, just once, a dark blot

i don’t kiss it. heba said i only write 

poems about other people. i guess 

she got me. i wish someone 

had warned me you’d get me

that one day id awaken with 

my own needs. the ants that stream

up and down my orchid pause

in their path to touch heads. i can’t 

kill them. one crawls onto me and i 

kill it. is this a gesture of affection

or of self protection, a

negotiation of space with

someone going the opposite way?

i can’t wash you off, little stain

i’ve been ready to lose everything

but that doesn’t matter 

i guess you told me watch out

i guess the problem is with my eyes 

when you told me you weren’t 

coming to my birthday party you 

googled “how to overcome 

avoidant attachment” and sent 

me the screenshot. i found 

this romantic. we had the idea

that we’d film ourselves in 

cowboy hats on separate beds

complaining about emotional labor

call it queer culture

heres a picture of an orchid i plucked 

and laid upon your sternum

heres a picture of a sunset  

i took on your camera

looks like a portrait, me with a rope 

around your waist, dragging you along 

the first time it happened i couldn’t

listen to music, just the record 

turning when the song was over

this time i can’t remember

and everything wants to make me

remember, so i tell the 

stain. i tell the portrait. i tell

the orchid. i tell each place your 

foot fell on my carpet, hoping 

things will become simple again in time

as the dumb thud that measures 

the speechless intervals of grief

amazing how the words keep

coming after it seems to be over

you’d think the poet would have

collapsed by now, and maybe 

they have, maybe this is

writing itself

mack gregg is an artist, teacher, and Ph.D candidate in literature at the University of California, Riverside, on Cahuilla land. Their scholarly writing has appeared in Volupté Journal and Studies in Walter Pater and Aestheticism. They can be found on Instagram at @mid_evil.