Everyone is speaking of the weather.

Weather filling them, weather as culprit.
— I shot the man because the sun was too hot.
— Why did I even ask him out? Bc spring.
My phone is filled with clapping hands.
— Thanks for talking to me!
But my dog is as still as ever on my grey bed.
Hair comes off him in clumps.
He makes little dogs in all the corners of my room.
He’s accustomed to bits of himself sloughing off.

My body has become incestuous with my body.

I am green and emaciated.
The pretty girl I like is going on a date with my pretty friend.
I don’t blame her; I have dated this pretty friend.
My pretty friend poured wine down my mouth;
it swiveled down my throat onto my shirt.
I looked as if I had eaten my own arm.

That bird is just a leaf.

I ransack our past, but it is a weak blackness.
I come back with this poor plastic bag.
I put it on my head and dance like a chicken.
I chirp, Come here, come here, let me woo you sweet woman.
I am a fat hot air balloon.
All my words are ellipses, used toilet paper.
I am trailing it everywhere behind me.
I keep trying to leave.

Rushing Pittman is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Rushing’s work has been published in The Knicknackery and Toad.