Back In Town
July forgetting how to be July.
He always knew
when she was back in town.
July forgetting how to be July.
Birds choking back their songs.
Swings moving without wind.
Parks losing the sound of children.
Then the posters for missing cats.
She was something else every time.
Different youth.
Different fairytale.
Different corpse.
And yet she always found a way
to knock at his bedroom window
on the fourth floor.
It was snowing that September.
Ghost hour.
Feverish dreams.
He felt a knock.
Then another.
Then he saw her face.
Paper-moth skin.
A ridge of moon for a nose.
Ribboned collarbones.
Splintered ribs and stitched lips.
Belly full of pills and sweet rosé.
Perhaps they had enough time
to teach her words this time?
To talk?
To share dreams?
To understand?
To write.
Poems.
Love letters.
Lullabies.
Threnodies.
“Let me in”
were the first words
he taught her.
The only words
she needed to know.
“Let me in”
she softly spoke.
And he welcomed her
behind unguarded walls,
opened gates,
fevered skin,
and laid full tables
she couldn't eat from.
When the rainy autumn came
she forgot her own name.
And yet she remembered
the one on every tomb
she stole from.
The leap.
The blast.
The poison.
The crack.
“Let me out”
one day
she softly spoke.
When they sat on the roof
in the freezing truth
of her borrowed time.
Lacing fingers,
smoothing worn skin,
mourning the black of her hair
as it dissolved
into the pale void of her gaze.
“Let me out”
were the last words
she taught him
before the dawn.
The swings stopped moving for no reason.
Then started for every reason there was.
The birds remembered home.
December rain paid the summer debt.
But it couldn’t strip her ash
from his shaking hands.
If I love torturing my characters, you love hunting yours.
The way you write your curses… it’s funny how they end up feeling like—
Different corpse - ouch. This pen doesn’t play about x