I confused her body for a simplified prose version of Paradise Lost. I confused her heritage for a false-bottom box. I confused her weeping for express written consent. “Choked with leaves” is the kind of thing a child would say in this rhomboid fun park and yet you’ve been saying it under your breath, way under, ever since the posse of stars rolled in. Obese with echo, Milton tips his brim. Twenty-one years of destroying all evidence of use has produced extensive evidence of wear. So I hike up my graphite trousers and set out for an epicenter of great beauty and peacefulness. “A major event.” She called the publication of a portable version “a major event.” She called my adjusting the clasp “a major event.” She confused my powerful smell for a cry from the street.
