Writing Your Name on the Glass

AFTERLOVE

Then there was a time I felt the room I was in
a prison: the young squirrel my childhood cat caught

and let go inside our house: a blur, all tail,
and my mother's scream for a more favorable

catch-and-release. The way I held it—firm
but not so tight as to bruise—how readily my hands

became a cage, such utility. Once I picked up a man

at a bar—while he slept a blue light from the bathroom
illuminated part of his body. How long I spent studying

his lone tattoo: a fly wing, in such detail, above his heart.