Thanks, Instagram

Sometimes I remember
how much he loved you
and how that couldn’t
save him.

Your tits looked great
spilled into that dress.
He wanted so badly
to be full of different
things about which
he could be honest,

didn’t say a damn thing
about the cruel reality
of his contents, made
yours
its own silenced inventory.

And that is no place
where love
can live, but God,

he tried.

Abigail Kirby Conklin is an educator and writer currently based in Toronto, Ontario. She is the author of the 2020 chapbook Triage (Duck Lake Books), the Substack "Recently," and a variety of other works that can be found, amongst other places, in the Tule Review, Sugar House Review, Wild Roof, and Lampeter Review. She can be found online at abigailkirbyconklin.co, and on social media via the handle @akc_poetry_prints