Kyle Hemmings is a retired health care worker who lives in New Jersey. His work has been published in Menacing Hedge, Airgonaut, Lunch Ticket, Futures Trading, Mojave River Review, and elsewhere. He loves street photography and 60s garage rock bands that never made it big.

after alice, i slept alone

she steals my superheroes, shreds my virgin-shallow sense of proportion. she works
herself into parts and spaces ruined by anti-gravity and drag. her arms wrapping
around my crashing until silence is the last accident that distorts the two of us. in the
aftermath, i am left on the summer bed, lemon-scent & sloe gin on the brain, twisting
around my breaths as if outlining the possibility, denying the hollow of my lungs.

washcloth & soap
can you reach places never touched?