Interlude: Other people’s poetry

This is Nikki Rhodes, everyone. The best thing I've felt.

Best Beloved (I'm in the market for a new title for this btw)


If you burn enough people, you can squeeze
the ash into coal, the coal into diamonds.
We are carbon bodies; we will be.

If I were wealthy, darling, and I wanted
to keep you with me everywhere, here
is what I would do to you:

I would burn down your house with you in it,
you and your cats and your bottles and books.
I would burn it thoroughly. What didn't catch

I would leave hanging on strings
from the maple tree in your yard until
it was eaten by birds and sliced them through

like glass. The ashes and coal, I would push them
together so tightly they shone. I would compress you
into diamonds, you, your home,

and everything you know. I would wear
you on my neck and be beloved all the time. People
would say how beautiful you were but they

wouldn't even know the half.