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On Our First Date You Pick Me Up

On our first date you pick me up,

but there’s no room in the front seat

because of the dogs.

And so we talk and I see you –

sometimes – looking at me

(through the mask of your eyes in the rearview mirror)

from the backseat of your Subaru,

while the city of big shoulders grows

foggy around me in the rain.

When I kick something on the floor, and see

that it’s an urn overturned next to a bone at my feet,

I jokingly ask if I’m spilling someone,

and you reply that it’s only

what’s left of your mom,

after scattering most of her out on the edge

of Flagstaff. And that bone?

It must be left over from the dogs, you say,

because, it’s way too big

to be a human bone.