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Always Messing with them Boys
Jessica Helen Lopez           
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C
ustody

At the restaurant, across the table
of neutral salt shakers and violent forks
our stiff backs like wooden chairs
betray an ancient battle.

We discuss the finer points of divorce
over spilled merlot and plates of cold food.

You speak, and I grit my ears. My face a closed envelope.
I draw lines in the spilt salt with my steak knife.

Our daughter is a dividend
carved from my hip
and a piece of your rib.
She scribbles furious
red circles marking the paper,
bleeding the tablecloth.

Her voiceless soul rustles,
a thousand shards of glittering mirrors
hanging like leaves from a tree.

Poised above her delicate head,
her seashell ears, her round face,
hair like fine spun silk,
Solomonfs hefty sword ready to burst her
bone from flesh
cut her in half,
one piece for me
one for you.

We swallow the last
of our bitter wine,
split the bill
and part ways.

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