“the browning of butter” by Sun


    fires usually happen at night, for me—


    that small details & inconveniences offend


    me the most, like the way google docs capitalizes the


    first letter, every time, without fail, as I try and


    my sister, and how I burned the butter just now, and I have nothing


    but cheese and an abundance of salt. & why is it so difficult to write


    a poem while making a quesadilla?


    My father taught me to make quesadillas: two flaps of tortilla and cheese and salt


    & crisp and now, sitting a country away, I am reminded that we will graduate


    from the same university, and that, at the time, I didn’t think to ask what he liked to drink,


    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.& now I’ll never know. but it was on the rocks, because memory has a funny


    way of mocking us, you & me, & how history repeats, & I remember


    you taught me how to shoot, & that one night, for no


    particular reason, I made a decision that I still remember—one of the few


    stories I carry with me, a heavy book, from childhood. Fires usually happen at night,


    and I wonder if grammarly was made with poets in mind, and if I’m being too direct


    when I say that slow drivers should die, & perhaps I only judge things as they relate to me,


    and that perhaps all I really mean to say is that I’m only indirect


    because now the quesadilla is burning, and the only thing I know about spanish


    is that two l’s sound like a y, and that your mother taught it once, and I wonder


    why it takes intrusive thoughts to remind me that bridges are very high, and hurt and healing


    only seem to happen in cars, and that you cursed me with your solitude, and I’d only


    commit theft for one reason, and I want to fucking punch the shit out of that mirror


    but I’m frightened of needles and nurses and you held me down on the table,


    and I think I punched the mirror, but self-inflicted wounds have a tendency to punish


    others, and the blood on my hands isn’t my own. A smell


    and the butter browned & I forgot to add the salt, but the quesadilla tastes just fine.