It Tastes The Way You Smell

Winter is falling down around in tinsel colors bright and cheap, we wear red and green, and call the sickness holiday. Little boys gone dead sprout into pumpkin vines that bear no fruit and tomatoes swell too full and drop, unnoticed to the ground. One bite warns off any rodent who has grown fat with summer berries. Stained fingers save a few for father or eat them greedily without the adventure told to another soul.

We run around the point and mosquitoes bite our ankles, stealing without asking, what we dare not give to lovers willing.

There are dishes in the sink and bedspreads still worth staining, but I’ve got days to warm it now, before I’ll have the chance.

We’ll slap hands and laugh until the neighbor sets the dogs out, and windows smash from rough intentions, biting necks and crushing kidneys.

You left your scarf and hat behind, striped around my bedpost, and I was left to shed my tears from all the kisses you would miss, the week or so you left them.

It shouldn’t sting so much to have the coffee cup three days old sitting, by the side that warmed the sheets and is in control of deeper feeling. And Sunday is the day to start, new cycles once again. As pink droplets reign over mother nature and stop the monthly flow. I grow my own trees of progress and promise that our seeds will never mix, that we will never share, one heartbeat, eight weeks old.

I’d ask you what George Washington and cavemen have in common, than tell you it’s their hair. Thanks to pen and sharpie, the King shall live again.

And I’ll mix one with won and hardly know the difference, saving bottle caps for Christmas. We’ll put Vaseline on our rough edges and stop and go, stop and go, pull hair and swear, until my mouth is swollen ripe and red and teeth have bitten through. It shouldn’t be and missing pieces we think of me inside of you.

And if you judge my bare reflections, leave me elbows wet and sudsy in the sink, I’ll eat raw egg and smash the dishes, down around our cold wool feet. For we’ve got blankets, blacks and browns, while she’s a Patrick Star. And I can’t help but think of when you leave me at your car. Face still lined with salt, I press upon the day, when good-bye is just a trick we use to give ourselves some space.

The screams are constant now and break against the rocks to wails. Some cult is chanting in a language, the director chose to tape. Budgets set on gallons of blood and shirts that rip away. Halloween cascades as some unsentimental day.