Ruin
Lucia LoTempio
wind takes down
the big branch
heavy with fruit
insist it was lightning—it was not
with splinters and steam
at the drops all heat
incline of rushed
brown water and twig
in the window
a reflection of bark
wet on my face
another mess
in the next
room over
I would like
to scrub
and with bleach
face a half
and small
a woman tells me
something happened
I still must pick
up a shirt
from the dry cleaners
I hate the word duty
at every brow, me
a warm sponge
and I am asked to cover
my name like a palm
on my heart
and I have a room
with a man
and I hand the man
his shirt
and I throw
away our mail
without opening
and a sprout
from the spot
on the rotted apple
Lucia LoTempio is the author of Hot with the Bad Things (Alice James Books, 2020). You can find her poems in Passages North, The Journal, TYPO, Quarterly West, as part of the Academy of American Poets poem-a-day series, and elsewhere. With Suzannah Russ Spaar, she co-authored the chapbook Undone in Scarlet (Tammy, 2019). Lucia lives and writes in Pittsburgh.