Oh, sweet lithe creature!
You radiate light
And warmth
And a playful arrogance, harmless rebellion

Your smell is clay and moss,
Cigarette and cologne and Society

We burn burn burn through the night
And share sweet desire and bitter coffee

But you turn on your heels
And go. Go!

When I see you again we'll be ghosts
I'll blush and you'll tell me something dry
I'll want you to wrap me in your arms,
To feel your breath on my neck again.

"I'm sorry. Take care of yourself, Cailey."

It's placed squarely in the upper corner.
I'll send you away,
And wash my hands of you forever.

You'll tell quite a tale-
And it may be honest,
But it's certainly not true.

My gold hair still reflects the sunshine
Back to your wet but empty eyes
That tell your earnest, bumbling mind
To take the straight and narrow path
Directly towards oblivion.

Camel Blues protruding from the right hip pocket
Of your too-tight skinny jeans
Containing the gracefullest legs
You're a tower.

You've left your mark on me
In more ways than one
And I fell to pieces, leaking colors through the cracks
Like none I'd known were there

But you aren't going to pull me close again
Or run your knowledgeable hands
Over my worn-cotton white skin,

Alas.

These pale little fingers
Are lavishly decorated:

Dried clay soil
Around and under jagged stubby nails
A pink crescent-moon scar
On the third one's second knuckle,
India Ink dried in drips and streaks
Deep whorl prints
Like no others- snowflakes, IDs

And slow to heal,
Painful to the touch,
These omnipresent little slashes,
Paper Cuts.

Snowed in,
We prepare peasant food:

Simmering onions
Then broth
Base for boiling fish stew
Cooled in the snowbank beside the brown ale
The pineapple pies
and the venison steak.

Proclaimed the paper-cutout placard on the table:
Clothless gray plastic-surfaced round.

In this immense faux-stone (concrete?)
Faux-English country house
We escape to the top of the stairs:
The no admittance sign is no deterrent.

The iridescence of your skirt is captivating
But all I can remember is living in a castle like this one
When I was a little blonde nothing
And feeling the way I do now,
As if there's been no transformation, no progress.

Maybe there has,
And this band must be pretty great
To keep this many old white people dancing so enthusiastically
For such a long time:
An ancient one with a Christmas-themed vest
Foxtrots with a once-lady in a polyester pants suit
Thin hair dyed roofing-tar black, suede kitten heels clacking.

The world's a **** strange place.
Even if we feel like we aren't quite awake,
We'll adjust our stockings and fill our plates
With that mystery-shrouded gelatinous citrus dessert
And our plastic cups with apple cider, light beer, 7-Up.

Endure a few more minutes on this rented dancefloor with me
Because they're playing love shack
And who doesn't smile at the mere notion of the B-52s?

Hearing the high-register flute tones
Drift up from downstairs-
Not sweetly like the angels' song
Or gently like a bird's:
But forcefully, repetitively,
Like the sound of a car's anti-theft alarm,
Has slowly heated my mind past its boiling point.

And now the walls are closing in
And the water's running black from the tap
And it's dripping down your cheeks
Flowing like your endless grievous tears.

We can't accomplish anything we set out to do
You call me and we babble for an hour
About nothing.
You'd had something important to say
But it never came out-
Your plans like the half-formed sneeze that looms imminent
And then inexplicably disappears forever.