Penny Sarmada
As it turned out, you only wanted to borrow my heart. It wasn’t the sort of thing that held your interest, really, so you thumbed through, underlined a few horny passages and, narrowly avoiding a late fee, slipped it into my mailbox where I was sure to find it in the morning. You didn’t return it in quite the original condition, but then nobody ever has. It’s a little more finger smudged and wine stained than before, dog-eared and slightly foxed. I’ve grown accustomed to carelessness. One day I’ll stop remembering that you scrawled a few sentences of your own in the margins, some over-egged metaphor adding nothing to the plot, forgettable words strung into a shabby paragraph no longer or more significant than this one.
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Penny Sarmada is from Ontario. Recent stuff in Versification, Cotton Xenomorph, Roi Fainéant and Bullshit Lit Mag.