Paige Lewis

THESE BODIES, THREATENED BY ALL WE BUILD

• I trip and my palm catches the corner
• of your record crate. No blood, but thin
• bones shift and you bend down. Are you okay? 
• I think, Shut up for a moment, Pain gets worse
• when you ask about it. Are you okay? I think
•  
• about the news report: a beautiful woman
• who didn’t notice the brick that spiraled
• from a half-finished fifth floor. Is she
• beautiful because she was supposed to be
• married this June? Because she is dead?
• You said, No one looks up anymore. 
•  
• And about the man who spent his life
• savings on a shelter for strays. Maybe
• it wasn’t the smoke that killed him, 
• maybe it was because he couldn’t open
• all the cages, maybe he died because
• the crying—multiplied by two hundred
• soft mouths—had all at once stopped. 
•  
• Are you okay? And that fox hanging,
• her tail caught in the picket fence gap. 
• Open bone and no strength to gnaw free. 
• And the flies. And you said, She can live
• without her tail. And maybe this is for
• the best because the fences will stay up. 
• No one is taking down the fences. 

PAIGE LEWIS is the copy editor at Divedapper and an Assistant Poetry Editor at Narrative Magazine. Lewis’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, New Orleans Review, Smartish Pace, and Willow Springs.