(When Francis Rose was 16)


God,

People who are smart make brittle, cluttered sentences that they think braid the world together. I am smart too so secretly I think that. I finger other smart people's sentences that string through the air. Sometimes I am not smart and the brittle sentences shatter and pieces of the world drift apart from one another and I say save me my Lord. Things are held together in ways I don't understand. I try to hold myself to you with my sentences. I harpoon at you like you're Moby Dick so I can lace us together. When I am not smart, I am fearless and when I am smart I lie to myself so my aggressions continue. You are elusive so I tell myself you forgive me because if I were you I would. I am tender and shrill like a wife who hates her kitchen but doesn't leave. You made love in the first place so how can I be different. How can you not forgive me?


---Rose

Francis Rose's grief
Francis Rose's letters to God from when she was:
[14] [14] [15] [15] [16] [16] [16] [17] [17] [18] [18] [18] [20] [21] [21] [22]

How can you not forgive me?



rain and frying meat
old corsages and underpants
It is snowing
people with soft lives want time
the sestina
the sestina's introduction
brittle, cluttered sentences
airplanes are not angels
people talk in fluttering prayers
please don't be a mirror
thin webbing
sodder the minutes together
fields torn off of a green sun
the sky burns with stars
Tractus Love-cannibalism
Francis Rose's sweater drawer