inbetween the sofa cushions of my beaten leather couch where i’d at one point lost some spare change, some broken hair ties, most of my innocence. inside the outer linings of a sink drain that my mother had thrown her wedding ring into, along with her consistency, her courage, her care. not to mention a few crickets i tossed after they’d eaten some rotten oranges. something i later learned took much unclogging. “next time throw ‘em down the toilet like all those goldfish we used to have,” mother said. above the highest shelf i could reach, where my sister stored the letters from lesbian lovers she encountered over the summer, along with a small baggie of marijuana and her aspirations for a ‘bright future’. underneath the rug.

is that where you were for all of these months?

“and now i’m smiling, ‘cause you’re out of hiding.”