the squander

pocketing our hands and walking away, sleepwalking, moon-pulled. such wild and lonesome things that we've become. buried in the heavy snow that holds the house up, i won't be seen again until the fence melts.

all our trembling bridges made of eyelashes & braille, milkweed & mustard, wild carrot & clover. my heart is an enthusiastic, old sinner. your scruples are shameless, oozing with god. lobbed with contradiction. snatching up all of my only moments.

you climb my giant chestnuts like kudzu. you come undone like loose buttons on old pajamas, a pile of brown and yellow leaves kicked over. erecting sparkled mausoleums of our doomed chance, snow isn't overrated.

my magnificent attempts to throw myself out the window. your big round marbley sea-lion eyes, watered down with indecision, looking after me, flooding my gills with your honeyed breath. i bet my last piggybank quarters and you bet the lint from my pockets, calling my bluff that is impossible to prove, winning the pot by default.

all your careful drinks taste like medicine. cooking your heart on a wrought-iron spit. your hands move like sparrows.

i keep coaxing the pirates. backing you onto the plank. i keep walking out into the trap.

we can scrub and rinse and rinse me and i'll never come clean.

sit still and i'll show you.


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