teapot gray windbreaker
warmed by the fright of
thin, young leaves—

they fall while he lingers
on the third day, before
everyone goes to church
and the girlfriend calls the police.

gone missing for just two years.

one-word answers found bits
of cheap lip balm melting on
the insides of someone’s glass.

afternoon phone calls split
his concentration, the arch
in her frantic foot now sharp
as modern time’s resolution.

both thumbs show deep craters.

blemishes fester behind
those aching ears that
haven’t yet bled—

fingers busied on his lap
for he never learned to dance
across autumn’s wide chasms
like dreams and their neon claims.

When not writing content for small businesses, Kristine Brown spends her weekends walking through historic neighborhoods and taking pictures of local cats. She features the cats on her blog, Crumpled Paper Cranes (https://crumpledpapercranes.com). Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Hobart, Vending Machine Press, Eunoia Review, Burningword Literary Journal, among others, and her first collection of poetry and flash prose, Scraped Knees, was released by Ugly Sapling in early 2017.