When she came home from work

she hurled her keys into the void

of our apartment sometimes they'd

wedge in the corner of the couch or

skid across the kitchen floor but that

afternoon they hit the big bookcase

and dangled over the back end of

the top shelf and though almost every

morning involved a mad scramble to

find them the following morning we

killed forty-five minutes searching

and when I finally held them up she

went to snatch her purse from the sink

where she'd left it but heading out

the door she paused at the entryway

and looked down as if the shoes she'd

pulled off and thrown in opposite di-

rections the previous afternoon would be

waiting for her right there and when

they weren't her face flushed and she

flipped a switch she couldn't flip any-

where else but home and launched into

attack mode saying I needed to give up

this poetry thing becuase I was twenty-

four and hadn't made it as a writer so

therefore probably never would and

it felt like invisible threads were trying

to pull me out of myself I didn't know

how to respond so I stared the front door

down for half an hour after she slammed it

behind her by how could that prepare me

for that afternoon when she came home

and peeled off her rain-soaked jacket

and tossed it on a stack of my student

papers announcing that I needed to get

a quote unquote real job or that night

when I reached out to hold her in bed

I got an elbow in my side and she said

I was just like her molester