A Transitive Verb
Stephanie Lane Sutton

This is how we will unbutton: to cause an earthquake, which is to say
it was a disc, slipped, like a bone undone. What I look like from behind

walking away.

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A transitive verb : is to open the folds of : to spread or straighten : expand, as with an open map

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If you are the universe, it would explain the primal scum in your kitchen sink,
your ability to stack conversations, cheat at card games, how it is difficult
to explain without using you as a word in the definition.

I like to stop
by continuing to move, like this, away from the first syllable of
I admit.

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Twice, I brought the glass bottom down, hard
because of what you had said. I do believe
an omission is not a lie. It feels like the touch
of your shoulders is your attempt to embrace me.
In this effort I am only held when I reach
back.

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Do not confuse the dreams for centrifuge.
The brain hides fear so deep it be cannot released
except at night, asleep, small hands opening and closing,
opening and closing. A body is sometimes a door
slamming itself shut. A body is sometimes a pupil
getting smaller as one light gets brighter. I keep looking
at you like your face is a spread of tarot cards but I don't know
how to read tarot cards. What I do know is the stars inside of us
are not the same as the stars in the sky. I am a believer
in coincidence: the coin, flipping.