Shooter

            I think of your mouth from so long
ago pursed like a guitar string, or
            parting as you strummed your baby

blue bass. The scar that snagged
            your jaw, slithered to shoulder, stretched
to the soft of your sternum… Skin

            still hot as if just hit, how it puckered
like a first kiss. I think of your smile
            at sundown: splayed, sleepy & spilling.

How you’d stumble to bed with dusk
            collecting at your corners, left canine
a cracked crescent. I think of those

            lips you’d tap, tug, tear—that wanted all
the wrong people, & the tongue that said
            so at all the wrong times. How they hurt.

& hurt: all the hip & thigh you loved
            because they weren’t mine, how I kissed you
like I didn’t taste her brine on your teeth.

            & even then, I don’t think I would’ve left
had I known the dreams would stay:
            that I would still spend my nights with you,

alone, at an archery range, gaze-
            level with the bullseye. Even in sleep, I know
I am no longer your love—so I try

            my best to be your arrow. & each time, you
pluck me from the rack & pull me
            to your cupid’s bow as if it has the power

of an actual. You draw me back: one
            eye closed, finger & eyebrow arched—
& then you let me go. & when I wake

            to dawn dribbling down my window-
pane, the first thing I hear myself
            say each morning is god, please, don’t

shoot.

Caitlin Lee-Hendricks is a writer and educator living in Western Maryland. She holds two BAs from the University of Maryland, College Park, and is looking to apply for a MA in education. Caitlin currently teaches creative nonfiction and poetry at Barbara Ingram School for the Arts. Her work has been featured in Stylus and 50 Haikus.