Sometimes You’re There in the Felled Caramel of a Snickers Bar—That One Strand of Goo Refusing to Make a Clean Break

I was the green canoe
roped to the porch, you were the angel behind No
Trespassing, hands cupping your heart.

Graffiti finds its way into abandoned places
like the loudest voice anyone can have
is to scratch i was here into stuck salt on your car door.

Beneath every cliff ledge is shelter. Someone makes
blankets to cover entire empty gas stations. Sometimes
I circle the parking lot and whisper
be leaving be leaving be leaving.

Cindy Ostuni is a writer and clinical social worker living in Syracuse, N.Y. Her work has been published in Entropy, The Pinch Journal, Unearthed, The Stone Canoe, the Reader’s Write section of The Sun Magazine and The Comstock Review.