******* this hint of musk. It papers my eyes in polaroids. Drags me by the hair into every dusty corner. ******* sweet from clover until I’m dried up. A clay man cracking in the oven. ******* the burning leaves. Pillow-puff wafts of smoke sneak in through cracked windows. Take my hand, lost boy. Let’s **** the umami autumn into our mouths. Come closer, let me lap it up from your lips while my fingernails tighten into your skull. ******* the summer sun. It boils my shoulders into blister-pop red. A layer of skin piling up on the nightstand after a day in the backwoods. The creek kissed the mud from my toes & exposed a leech…feeding. Later, I cried alone on the bathroom floor when I plucked it like a petal. ******* its pregnant body & everything stolen from me.

Screeeech goes the sound of the metal door sliding to a close in a house black as crows. An owl howling—juxtaposed with white earthenware pecked by rainbows. Happy Christmas from the trenches of bone meat and parsley. I’m legs crossed in a quiet corner screaming “cut!” because this strange stage play needs to be noosed. The compactor reeks of trauma pressed too neatly. Coats piled on the floor with salted mistletoe. A savory kiss from the host as she clack clack clacks her dentures. A hand not to be slapped, but severed—falling onto the feast table. A crack of pepper. The guests scream as apples tumble from the backyard tree. Quickly wheeled away to conceal all of the rotting. You see, the morning sun in Harmon insists on licking a clean lawn. But this boy is a dawn renegade with a fistful of fuel. And when I unearthed your heart, I set it aflame. Cranberries in my smile, while the black house burns.

Eli looks at me while buttoning his shirt and asks: “Where do shadows go when it rains?” I take a sip of communion wine and lift my body from the baptistry. “Here.” My thumb stroking his left chest pocket. Christ, we both know about disappearing acts. He smiles for a moment before a tear unfurls like a ribbon. I kiss his eyes and then we slip out the back. My lips still salt-wet. Where does love live when it’s forbidden? My feet turn the pedals. Eli’s hands are on my waist as we bike into the sunset. Two fallen angels.

Sometimes I pretend to have blood-love enveloping. And if I did, when I’m too weary to breathe they’d tell me:

“Rinse out your soul in sage and citrus. Wrap your heart in artichoke leaves. Kiss your cheeks with bing cherries and paint your nails chartreuse. Drink.

This tea is ancestral and sweet. Son, breathe. Slip your limbs into water so salted you’re floating.”

They’d burn candles ceremoniously. And inside this ring of protection, my racing thoughts cease. A holy basil embrace. A family.

But let’s be real. When my inhale catches in my throat like a flash flood. I’m alone. It was all just a fantasy painted in cord blood.

A Sicilian lemon grove.
Root-rotted.
Fruit of stone.

He was lost in the second verse when a hand settled softly on his chest. & if he knew then what he knows now, he’d see it not as gentle. Not as sweet.

He would’ve leapt from the sill of his second-story window if only to feel less perishable.

He’d mind the gap when boarding the train. Calmly staring out the window at the syrup sunset & a longhorn-shaped hole. A matador, too slow.

But it was the love J didn’t feel when holding him that sent him screaming down the street. It wasn’t serene. It was wet with love-deth.

&
d e a f e n i n g .

The chorus hit like an ice pick when the white car pulled up to drag his body away. The berbere dream euthanized and preserved in a jar. On display for strangers to gawk.

The way your forearm sculpts as your fist pumps the steam. Give me all the toppings on a six-inch submarine. My god, I’m starving.

Eighty-five cents and something sweet. You’re laughing with your friends. But can you imagine? In the closet near the vending machines. You could be my BB King.

You see,
I've been downhearted baby
Ever since the day we met

And it’s worse at the bar. 1 am. I’m locking up when you hold me tight. You dare to kiss my neck. A choice, unfair. Boy, you better come correct.

Because you split. No ****. But I want two scoops of you in my bowl. Whipped cream and a cherry stem in my teeth. I could be your Dairy Queen.

Ever since we met
(your hair moves in the breeze)
I’ve been downhearted
(the way you look at me)
I’ll never be your baby

I’m trapped, ok. Do you understand? Frozen on Delaware. Teetering on a low-head dam. Praying to be pulled into the drowning machine. Yet stuck like a glitch two seconds from death. I am the déjà vu black cat on loop. Subsisting in a broken economy where heartbeats are stutters of lace in a famished bed. Don’t you get it? I’m not even here. Or there. Call my name and listen to it echo down the halls of Lovers Lane. Ricocheted off the asphalt and taped into cardboard. Left behind in past-due storage units. A scuffed CD-R in a wi-fi world. Desiderium monolithed in bedrock. An analog fossil shipwrecked in minor key. Driftwood grief washed upon a February beach.