Hell was closed so all the devils came to the city. In Chinatown they sold angel meat and fake Prada bags. In Times Square they prescribed Adderall and Absolution. On Madison they fashioned girls out of bone—one of them must've broken into our studio and put on your skin, because the thing that packed your shit and left wasn't you.

I went to our garden, sat beneath Hangman's Elm, only to find the devils in the garden too. "Beauty is the Sabbath from willing," you'd said. But now the magnolias were already in full bloom, bees writhing inside blossoms opened like toothless mouths, reeking of bad breath.


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