the charcoal-flavored panacea that is falling quickly and violently out of love

it was late spring, when the crepe myrtles
must be watered daily and my tulips have died.
spring, when the lolling bodies of fat earthworms
replace those dried and shriveled corpses
of earthworms long forgotten;
when the doe-eyed females bloom out of their wool,
veiled in that thin coating of spider-lace lust.

we lay, smudged-lipped, ears to the ground
to listen for the growl of that train, that future.
the sweet, musky smell of the earth before a storm,
the somber scent rising from heavily impregnated clouds,
the dry soil opening its mouth like baby birds
for lack of something vital. it saturates.

my hands are wet with something like water, like blood,
your teeth show through those pufferfish lips
like clean white rows of childrens oxfords.
the sun smiles down sheepishly,
the air roughly blooming against my pores,
like the inside of a loaf of bread.
the sun kicks up skinny legs
like a dark-skinned pin-up girl, and sips its tea,
and kicks sand in my face.

your eyebrows furrow like some overgrown centipede.
we are all blue-and-black, bruise colored,
like the inside of a lobster. must you evaporate,
curdled milk between my fingers?
sweet, sticky? morphing and sticking and slipping
like Cinderella's slippers out of my palms.

you lay at my feet,
no violent spattering of crimson
which is not ink and is not blood;
but rather the haunting,
the forever- caressing ghost of one who is and is not there.

rumbling along its tracks like a renegade bride
it shoots past me and into your arms.
and i am a-l-i-v-e without you.
oh, unexpected tragedy! the world shrieks!
i am inconsistant, i am indomitable.
i am dangerous.
no pretty face can hold me down!
the dewy wool air rubs like sandpaper on my body,
sloughing like salt,
and i am clean.