Fiction

All my journals are fiction with burned edges

and unlined pages.

In the center of page 4

after acknowledgements and prologue

it says,

I know some day soon

I will be fitted with a suit

that announces desire with color and cut.

I know, it says, that I will be fed with intention,

a proposal and a pledge;

preparation for a touch

that is the effigy of my expectation.

It says, I will burn like these edges

then inhabit the smoke.

This diary of someone else’s first draft

smells of ardor and ash.

I will read it so many times

that it stains my fingers.

I will draw faces with wide eyes,

with angled mouths

in corner spaces and imagine it singeing,

rearranging my fingerprints

until I become flash fiction

a plagiarist

a fire

a lie.