I’m sitting in a lawn chair
At the edge of the moon’s well cratered chest
I’m facing a woman whose company is pricy and measured by rounded hours
She sits full lotus
Supple legs twist in a curving swirl
Seated on the glass surface of the coffee table
Young and slight enough to have no rational fear of it shattering beneath her

I ask to ask her something
She simpers
Anything
So I begin my slurred inquiry
If there was a God
And
And it told you that
Today was the day you would die
But it would spare you and let you live on well
Well
Into old age if you could give a good reason why
It should let you live then
What would your reason be
I belch a pig’s roar
What would your reason be

She simpers again
Ooooh **** that’s a good question
She toys with the starched mass of her hair
Flailing to be remembered by me and gain another loyal customer

I guess
I guess I’d say that I had a daughter and
Do
You have a daughter
She’s nineteen at the oldest
Yesss I do
I blink
What’s her name
Her name is Nelly
So
So you’d say you had a daughter and
And that she needs me
She loves me
I love her
I can’t leave her alone

In the center of the dark and lashed ellipses that halo her hazel eyes
I’m finally seeing a woman

She tilts her face
Her bangs silk to her jawbone
What would your reason be

I unscrew my flask

I wouldn’t give one
I deserve to die
However
Luckily for me
This life is unfair and unjust
In reality
You can plead to God all you want but even if it hears you
It won’t stop what it’s already made
And what it’s made is death

We’re both still facing each other
But we’re not looking at each other anymore
We’re both staring at space’s unfathomable darkness
The all consuming black

I know from where she is
She can see the Earth
She can see the spins of white puff
The emerald and umber chunks
The deep sapphire that coats the planet’s skin
Maybe she’s thinking of Nelly

From where I sit
All I can see are the tiny scabs of distant stars
Moth bites
In an all swallowing cloak

I check my watch
My current bill is approximately 1,600USD
I hear her voice
For the first time today
Her voice is genuine and entirely naked
Are you saying that God doesn’t save anyone

The weight of the knife in my pocket
Feels heavier than it should be
Especially here
The craters of the moon are yawning wide
They’ve always made perfect graves

I drink the last gulp of bourbon from my flask

Before I answer her
I wonder if her question is also asked by the others
The high piled and shallow buried
Crisscrossing one another
Overlapped like piles of pottery pieces
Or shards of shale
They lie
Trapped on the sun’s mirror
Lifelessly embracing and lying upon each other
Coincidently kissing each others wounds
Stuffed in the stony rings of the craters of the graying moon

Some I left floating in lakes
Both here
And back on Earth

Are they all wordlessly asking each other
Screaming through sunken faces
Won’t God save us
Doesn’t God save anyone

I toss my flask to the side
It takes forever to fall

Well
Charlotte
As far as I’m concerned
He hasn’t saved anyone yet