The rifle never gets clean. She comes and picks me up in a Jaguar and she doesn’t love me anymore and I’m sweating more than I thought I could. On the way home I want to be cruel. I want to frighten her, I want her to know I’ve finally escaped. Her parchment fingers on my knee, I want to light the cigarette, I want her to see me light the cigarette. Our young bodies in the prairie, light falling through our eyelids. Twenty years, a paper cut. On the phone. My first love. The man in Paris, I’m saying now, whose face isn’t a face anymore, tell me who he was. I’m sorry, you tell me, hands around the telephone. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t remember.
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