qarrtsiluni

by Andrea Kneeland

O, stop.
Just because I’ve been gone.
Just because I find myself
Gone from myself and your body:
I come back. I come back. I come
Back to your body, I return again;
Just to the time. I am not that
Absence. I clean up after myself,
After you. Never believe, I can’t
Help that I am a man. Stop you
Your crying; nothing changes.
Just because I am sometimes gone
I call nothing my rose
Save you my rose.

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Andrea Kneeland has plans for the future. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in lots of different journals and anthologies and things like that. Writing was most recently accepted by Smokelong Quarterly, published by Barrelhouse and rejected by Night Train. She is a web editor for Hobart, and her first collection of stories, Damage Control, is forthcoming from Paper Hero Press as part of the Fox Force 5 chapbook collective. One time, she touched an elephant.