I have had
Enough
Of your
Verbal venom

You held my arm tight
In your iron fist
And spit acid on my
Wrists
Watching it burn holes
All the way down to my bones

You always did like to watch
Your influence in action
Or maybe
You always liked to be right.
Either way,
I️ grew up with holes in my skin
and my self esteem.

Something wicked this way comes
Hair of ravens feather
Cheeks stained pink as peaches
Like he’s been out in frigid weather
Skins been sunglazed
Smile like sunrays
Disposition soft as day break on Sunday
He Looks at me
Wholesome
With eyes like soil sea
He is the something clean and pure
The wicked thing is me

My eyes click clacked
To the cling clang
Of a bottle of *** hitting marble
Ava was sitting on the bar countertop
The boy with the glasses
Folded between her spider legs
Their teeth like piano keys playing one another

She ****** his shirt
Red maraschino
Pet his cheek with her
smooth leather palm
Stroked his hair with
Comb fingers
Bejeweled with silver rings

She stretched out her vowels like taffy when she spoke
Giggles stabbing themselves into the middle of her sentences.
“I️ like the way wine makes me feel”
She purred,
Swishing the words around in her mouth before she chased them down with
Pino Gris

I’d never seen this version of Ava.
Night velvet
Black cat
Skin sheets of raw silk.
She was slippery and evasive,
Like a mermaid
Hiding behind her hair and her scales and champagne,

Because
Inside
I️ knew
She wished the boy
With the glasses and the red shirt
Was her Brooklyn boy
So she kissed him with wine lips,
The force of disappointment and pain

Even the sweetest of grapes
Can Leave a sour aftertaste
On your tongue

Like a footprint of
pain in the plain
Of pleasure.

It’s kind of like that lately.
Like Ice kissing my fingertips
While sitting in the sun
Like the crash coming down
From a Sticky sweet sugar rush
Like the hot coffee
that burns red trails  
Down my throat
Sipped too soon

It’s hard to differentiate
the hurt from the high
when someone gave you
salt
Disguised as
sugar
For a
Long
Long
Time.

Office white
Like a feathered hen
She sighed aloud
and clicked her pen
I️ inhale, exhale, count to ten
“So that’s all? That’s I️t then? Take some pills and that’s the end?”
“Meditate”,
She said
“spend time with a friend”
Inhale, blink, count to ten.
Hands through hair again again
Tears and vision start to blend
Couldn’t she see?
The gaping tear
A ripped hole
Where the flesh of body should connect to  soul?
Blood in my mouth
Salt in my eyes
Heart going south
Tongue laced with lies
She smiled like plastic
Heart rate spastic
I️ could feel I️t
Unraveling
Frantic
Ecstatic
I️ could feel
As I️t began to fray
“Alright”
She said
“Same time next Tuesday”.
The doorframe echoed her footsteps away.
I’d never felt more fear.

She was perusing the linoleum trails when I walked into conoco gas at 6:49. I bought $20 of unleaded at pump three.
"I miss my jeep, but I sure don't miss the gas mileage"
she giggled from behind me with a filmy grocery bag bracleting her wrist. He name was Kiyomi, a Japanese citrus. "When my mom was pregnant with me, that's all she would eat. She joked that she'd give birth to a fruit instead of a baby."
She told me she plucked her shirt from the hamper when I complimented her outfit, and about her "**** neighbors" with whom she shared a complex. I made an excuse for the dirt sponging my shirt and tattooing down my legs. "It's from landscaping", I said as a way to somehow justify it. I felt like I'd known Kiyomi a long time when we said goodbye.  
With a half tank of gas, I started up Genevieve and we rolled off our opposite ways. It was as I walked up and down King Sooper's ribs of commercial aisles that I was so grateful to Kiyomi, the fruit girl. She showed her humanness to me. We hung up our social normalities like jackets, and spoke in the unfabricated way children do. Friday, June 3rd, roughly 6:53 pm, a girl of soil and a girl of fruit collided in connection. Like it was natures very own conversation.