It takes some time to make sense of his surroundings;
the bright light,
the cold floor tiles.
An empty tequila bottle floats into focus—
not that it makes any sense to him whatsoever
(tequila bottles don’t operate that way).
There’s a shot glass and first aid kit on the floor,
salt shaker,
meat cleaver.

It doesn’t take long to realize things had gotten out of hand;
he’s in cuffs,
she in fits and giggles.
He looks up at the underside of the kitchen table—
a blade of some sort is scraping over the Formica top.

Her legs are covered in badly-dressed wounds,
a hundred open mouths French-kissing
Betadine brown bandages.

He closes his eyes and asks for forgiveness,
prays that there’ll be love in her violence.

Forgiveness comes in the form of an axe,
and all the love she had for him
he’d beaten out of her.