Brennan,

It’s called contouring
you tell me, what you’re doing to your cheekbones

in our parent’s bathroom mirror, in wreathes
of shower steam the slatted
sunlight’s soaking up with jewels, a whole cosmos coming

magically to the morning’s order
under your sorcering hand; you’re lofting

what frames you
to the glittering
surface like an archeologist might

unearth after decades of digging
some missing link species of hominin,

luring it out
through the layered rock
of a strange country

in whose language she has all this time
somehow—how?—never learned

to say the goddamn simplest things: I’m sorry— Which way
is home?— Please, what do you call this?

Originally from Cleveland, OH and a graduate of Purdue University’s MFA program, Matthew Kilbane currently lives in Ithaca, NY, where he is completing a PhD in English at Cornell University.