i want your porchlight to beacon me home,
your body pressed against mine like warm yellow light at kitchen time, when darkness swathes its all-consuming, hungry self around the houses to sneak a bite, open-mouthed and unrelenting.
but you see, it is you, i want, to swallow me whole. i want the dishes to clatter, slice open our heels as we dance barefoot across the floor, cold-tiled, but smooth, so smooth,
and quiet.
no music, just the television,
not muted, just low.
do you remember touching your fingertips to the screen and feeling the static?
a vibrato, your mouth against mine, murmuring, mumbling, your slippery-warm words, watery coffee and oven heat, your twelve o’clock shadow at six-thirty, rough, not allowed to shave. you yield, you're compliant, it is me who wields the razor, up on the bathroom counter, legs dangling, precarious, your throat, all bared and foamed-over, like the *** we forgot, neglected on the stove.
we threw it out, all black-bellied and cancerous.
remember how we aired the stench out and let the cold in?
a little too alike those everyday scents,
of vacuumed carpet, of bleached clean bathtub. whiten the tiles, tug hair from the drain, throw away evidence, excavate the remains.

i can still smell your seven dollar hair dye, though you claimed you never had grays.