Erica Minton

IMAGE

By June she was showing up everywhere—
on the margins of TV Guides, on receipts
from his table-for-one dinners, on glossy
pink invoices for motor oil. He sketched her
on the fly, this imagined woman with fried egg
breasts and eyes as round as skillets.

Now
that he is gone I chase her through the house,
rubbing away what I can and leaving tiny vixen
ghosts in my wake. I pray while I rip and erase—
not for him, not for us, but simply praying
that I was not the inspiration behind her hips.