Guns I swore a long time ago that I would never sleep in a house with a gun, so when I spent the night at your parents house the first night, I was rattled by that gun case, the shotguns hanging there like brooms as if to really clean your clock, as if to really be ready for use, and I couldn't sleep in that room, I couldn't stop staring at the barrel, the trigger, was our sex a part of it? Yours shining and new, your finger on me ready to hear the explosion? Sleep wouldn't come. Later, you said, enough, and covered the case with a blanket. It was like a box of puppets then, hidden and silent, hoisted up by invisible strings, and the guns wouldn't kill the beer headache or the lights I insisted upon, wouldn't kill me or you or any thought of love, they would only need a target to be raised, to be poised and steady, here is where I lay still and straight, as if in glass, as if we all