Your joke hums and I can’t
unhear it. As if you weren’t
frequenting motels where the head
designers kerneled their ceilings
for you and other fuckers. I bang
my fist against the wall I offered
to you and your lovers and hope
I swallow some sleep. I don’t tell Sarah
because I don’t want to feel complicit. Like
I didn’t give you a key to my flat after
a close call off I-69. Like I don’t ask you
to send a 👟 when you’re dining on
full breasted, bone-in, chickens.
Like my apartment isn’t some high-
way motel you visit to freely cream
cheese bagels from the morning spread
at the buffet. When your wife begins
to question, you groan I am training
for the marathon! That you text me
sneakers so I know it’s time to go.
It’s funny how in college, when we
were roommates, I took to calling you
Roadrunner, logging miles before sunrise.
Before Philly, before Sarah, before I am best
man at your wedding. Before you hired out head
boards and caulked notches onto walls in the after-
shocks. Before your moans grew too
much like footsteps, pounding into loose as-
phalt, all wet and willing and forgettable.
***
Madeleine Corley (she/her) is a writer by internal monologue. She currently serves as Poetry Editor at Barren Magazine. Follow her on Twitter @madelinksi or wrotemadeleine.com.
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image: Lindsay Hargrave
Rejection Letters 