Those Kitchen Shears

Those Kitchen Shears

Are on the counter
—again—
I’m starting to wonder
if you might have
left them to say,
Cut out a place for me
in your heart

Listen, you already
have more than half
of that space
as if you’ve kicked out
diagonally
fighting some dream
(all six-foot-two of you)

So you don’t need a way in
and if instead
you meant,
Cut me out of here
just forget it
no OXO tool could
possibly help you escape

It would take
so much more
maybe
ten sticks of dynamite
to blast you out

Madeleine French lives in Florida and Virginia with her husband. You may find her in front of a sewing machine, behind a copy of Persuasion, or occasionally on Twitter, @maddiethinks. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Roi Fainéant Press, Dust Poetry Magazine, West Trade Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, The Madrigal, Remington Review, Door Is A Jar, The Westchester Review, and elsewhere.