Things that I feel guilty for:

The endless nights, bitter as vodka, which I grasp to remember
but turn to smoke
as things go.
The nights and the stars will soon be writ across the sky, where they have fallen from my
memory
and speckle this night’s dinner table, silverware set
and in the middle of the table
sits the salt.

The life cycle of a coat, which once gathered memories on a bus at night like a rug
gathers dirt;
unwanted and eternally rust-brown
and next gathered dust in my closet, once its fibers are contaminated
with my regrets, your blood, our memory.
Next, I return it to the nearest thrift shop, brought forth like a bottle from the sea; secrets
and saltwater inside.
may it bring its next owner the chances it brought me
and may its next owner never throw them over their shoulder, so nervously, so
superstitiously, like spilled salt.

The death of a deer under a backlit moon, causing a new headlight under the sun
and now its bones hang in some hunter’s living room;
and now my car can only limp where it and the deer once ran,
reminding me that I am a murderer with each speck of blood across my coat
like salt.

That I am the unwelcome, dripping, weatherworn visitor,
replenishing in my friend’s homes and cabinets,
like salt.

The scale growing power in the bathroom,
the salt shakers growing more numerous, soldiered between napkin holders, and

How impolite I was to waiters
and how I told them things so deep, my bone-vision
sinking through malleable skin and into smooth muscle
how I shook them up and down,
and how it made them small
like grains of salt.

so many grains
of useless salt
this bitter pill to swallow
may I force them down my throat at every meal to come.