Honey is the blood of the sweet and the rotten
With sugar-scabs on the back of their hands.

Their hands, stained to the wrists with pulp,
Waving to us from a roadside stand.
The people that live on this small mountain
Eat fallen fruit and peel off the flies.

His hands stick to the wheel as he drives,
Upriver, where the air is wet and heavy.
We swallow our words, thin like skim milk
And I smell the thunderstorm fresh on his clothes.

It covers the stench of his sweet rotting bones