Two girls sit side-by-side eating a can of peaches, one licks her fingertips as the other tips back the can and drinks the syrup. A single stray streak drips down her chin and circles her collar bone to find its way down between her *******. They look at each other; she laughs.

Cormac is looking at the dead roadside trees.
                  It’s going to be ok, he tells me.

It’s going to be ok.

I’ve spent my Saturday sleeping, my Sunday too.

But now, I stand
listening to the birds, a cacophony of sound bounces
between cattail and off the
water

It isn’t quiet out here
like you might like to think.
Flurries of feathers violent flit between the stems.
I sit on a bench beside the pond—
the drying leaves of the late world carried on the cold and temporal winds. The chill fiddles it’s way between the buttons of my coat and I’m shivering, staring
out
into the open-wide.

This air smells of smoke and arboreal decay—or, maybe it doesn’t.
Everything has smelled of smoke lately.
I need to wash my clothes.

between sand and soot
sits a little yellow shell
hollowed out; quiet

Yellow taxi cab tango
strings between teeth
teeth between tongues
underneath--

You pick the paint from under
your fingernails, but I want a man
I want a woman
Who leaves it be

Our love was
embalmed
in lace.

Subtle knives snuck under dish towels and pins
dropped into morning tea.
You were my sometimes moon,
covered in rust from head to toe.

With the unveilment of night, you were invisible in my room.
I traced the map of my floor many times traveled and found you.
Darkness, it tied together our hands-
with a warmth of smoky shadows blown out brownstone windows.

I always hated sharing a bed at night, cramped feet kicking out,
but with lips locked together and greedy fingers grasping,
I felt myself falling prey to the devil called love.