For months I mistook a cardboard cut-out of a black cat for my dead lover. While my husband slept, I ran through the nearby neighborhoods in the early morning chill, eager to see the black cat, my old friend!, in the window where he perched, underneath Halloween decorations and Christmas lights, until I saw him on top of a trashcan, a cardboard cut-out worse for the wear. I still looked for him long after I knew he’d been hauled away, along with everything else nobody wanted.

Michelle Brooks has published three collections of poetry, Make Yourself Small, (Backwaters Press), The Pretend Life (Atmosphere Press), Pretty in A Hard Way (Finishing Line Press) and a novella, Dead Girl, Live Boy, (Storylandia Press). A native Texan, she has spent much of her adult life in Detroit.