Every Saturday night, the band downstairs
covered King for twenty-or-so retirees at the bar.
They held onto their drinks and memories
as they applauded the classics, their rings
and watches sounding like wind chimes
against frosted glasses.

Broken wing love birds smiled and laughed
with one another. The bartender cut limes
and dropped cherries as they rose a drunken
toast. *Here's to this moment, where we're
anything but old.

Love is like an ice cube.
We hold onto it until
it gets too cold. Lucky
for us, I made room
in the freezer beside
TV dinners and a miniature
us holding hands atop
a slice of wedding cake.

He knelt down beside the nightstand
and gathered cigarettes smoked down
to the filters in his growing hands.
Loose ash stained his palms  
as he moved the butts to one hand
and slid a coffee cup closer with the other.
He stood up—his eyes barely met
the drawers' brass handles—and placed
the makeshift ashtray on top.

A woman watched her daughter
cry through the bottom of a shot
glass. As the last few drops of whiskey
passed her lips and tongue stud,
she closed her eyes tight and inhaled
the scent of cigarettes and Pledge.
Her daughter's spill tray was spotted
with tears, Cheerios, and formula
running down her chin like sweat.
The woman picked a giraffe baby
blanket up from the twisted carpet
fibers and swaddled her head, trying
to find silence. The baby screamed
louder, her face turning cranberry
red. The woman pressed her palms
hard against her covered ears
while sliding back on the couch, causing
her to kick the coffee table before her.
The shot glass rolled off and bounced
on the floor at her feet.

I'm studying my surroundings
because I don't want to throw a white
sheet over reality and lie about
what's underneath.

I'm fighting the urge to rhyme
because I don't want to have to mix
and wrench words to speak my mind.

I'm suppressing fits of profound speech
because I don't want to shift diction
to sound older or wiser than I am.

I set a table up outside
because I don't want to write inside
my head.

I'm tracing leaves, watching cars pass,
and sipping tea because I don't want
to guess.

High on Cateye and Ghost Sight,
I stumbled through the streets
of Salida del Sol beneath
the watchful eye of Father Elijah.

The roulette spinner cobblestones
clicked as my feet dragged
past the courtyard.

Like an effigy, the homemade martini
between my fingers burned
my gin-soaked lungs.

Sweat and vermouth settled
in the circuits of my collar
as I gasped for relief.

Hologram gamblers tossed golden
casino chips in dried fountains
as they strolled past me and through
the Sierra Madre's gates.

She intertwined her thick fingers
behind both shelves of the medicine
cabinet and embraced them clamorously
into the sink.

I.

Maybelline, Rimmel, and Revlon
now spotted with flakes of dried toothpaste
and ****** hair.

Just.

Her hands dove wrist deep into the pool
of glamor and acceptance before her
and emerged with scarlet lipstick.

Want.

She uncapped and carefully ran it across
her stiffened lips, accidentally coloring
her skin and the corners of her open mouth.

To.

She mashed a makeup brush into a jar
of powdered blush and swept it over
her cheekbones like a blood red sunset
overtaking a mountain.

Be.

With black tears running down her face
and staining her white shirt,
she reapplied her mascara.


**Beautiful.