Out of the Chamber

Bullets in your soup, cracking teeth. Bullets littered
along interstates, swimming pools, shoulders. Bullets eating

all your air. Glossy and slim-coppered, bullets
skirting your legs in the office park. Stacking us

one by one, shelled, spent. Sparkling in playgrounds,
magpies making new games: catch as catch can.

Crimson-ended. Bullets teaching geography,
rattling like pins in the map. Here is this one

and then the next one and then another before
we can bury the last one. Here is a church choir

with notes punctuated by bullets. Here a parking lot,
a snowy afternoon, where there is space

between flakes for bullets. Here is your hand
in the popcorn finding bullets. Here is your last bouquet,

your knock-knock. Bullets finding homes nestled
in our chambered hearts, clinging to tissue

that will not forgive. At the gas station, bullets wait
to end where your life should be