I Don’t Make Things for People Anymore—I Just Talk to Them

Love is folded away, inscribed on the wings of paper cranes, long missing. They have all been swept into the trash, crushed underneath furniture, not worth keeping in the move.

It would be cruel to peel one open layer by layer, weakening the creases, collapsing the shape until my aegis lay flat and deformed.

So, my love is scattered: crumpled at the bottom of pockets, dropped in the rush to the train, because I can only write on the hidden side of the paper.

This piece originally appeared in Epilogue, Franklin and Marshall College's literary magazine.