a cloud cover over restless eyes and
clawed paws tip tapping through churning thoughts
a speaker quietly trying to beckon sleep
turns into
moving words that mimic the nausea
returning with every memory of
the midnight parking lot by the seafood shack
post-sacellum sin oozing from green eyes,
sandy hair, a crooked nose, and the insatiable teenage boy hunger.
deflated tires, bent metal, broken curfews,
and smiling coercion were the marks of true love
my first kiss on the tarmac and now
i’m scared of double-bodied avions
sweating out recollections in an exposed steam shower
suffocating myself in a thinning quilt
made by another’s grandmother
she doesn’t know what happened to me,
but i know something happened to her.
dead-bolting myself into a foreign house with a
sandpaper tongue helping me lick my wounds.