LAST THREE DAYS
FRIDAY
Insatiable, my hands
reach for your arms only in the dark and climb up the muscles in your shoulder, weathering
your solid rock to my frigid touch. I’d love to
be worldly but it always seems that there’s a hometown grocery store calling my wretched name
And so gently, you wonder aloud why I dropped your hand when we walked to the fireworks show, why I wouldn’t kiss you under the eruption of everything and—
Instead of answering, I closed
my eyes, feeling the sticky air and the low hum of the air conditioner,
and the buzzworms choked us to sleep as the sky exploded outside.
SATURDAY
You’re sick, aren’t you?
In more ways than one. The doghouse is a perfect place
for my malleable skull. I cower
but I take the blows for you, eyes between my legs. At the end of the night
I’ll slink back to your room, your mousy hair and mischievous eyes
erasing the rakish men
who lean over the counter with business cards between their orderly,
filed nails. Saturday
night turns to Sunday
morning, and you can sing your sacrilege
as long as you want, but we both end up across the pews from each other in the
morning.
SUNDAY
You slipped away during a hymn, and as I saw your eyes
sparkle with anger, the choir sang to the heavens, “Are your garments
spotless; are they white as snow?”
and I knew to sing the next verse in a roundabout sort of way,
your mouth on mine, asking
Are we washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Our hopeful little piggy bank: gutted, splayed across my doorstep.
You’re gone and
all the one-dollars and two-cents and nights spent
vomiting up love till the phlegm was clear and
sinless are gone too. I waited
too long but maybe now you’re free from the hand of
god between your legs.