Overhaul

I ask if you remember the night you wanted me
to lean in, your cigarette burned

through my tights—the scar on my thigh stayed
after all of these years so I could remind you

about it. The scar would fit perfectly
in the sky— catch it at dawn, you don’t need

a dark sky. You send apologies & claim
you’re no longer an angry person, tell me scars

are a result of repair, but I’ve taken my body
to so many places & it is returned each time

I say your name—at the sides of beds, beneath
covers, & through hairs. I scream it on Wednesday

afternoons, on highways ridden with guilt
where I’ve memorized the miles to a new city.

I’m convinced one state over will be enough—
the big cats keep you from following. Remember

the night we laid in bed & I had a dream
you would die by twenty-eight. You tell me this year

you are twenty-eight & I’m still a kind person.

Annie Cigic hails from Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Bookends Review, Gordon Square Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University and will be pursuing a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing this fall.