Taste Buds

I don't listen anymore. The symphony in your search. Wordless epic of a hero who never won. Just let the ashes fall. It's not something that can be caught.

The soft frog with lips made of glass kisses the princess in her ugly pajamas. He doesn't change, but she does. So much thinner since. The lope of her skin as it travels over her skeleton like the cough of a dying wind over a leaf long since fallen.

Every night we wake up different. And every morning we're the same again.

Pillars of salt in the shadows of our gods.

The long song that never lets us listen. The hard lamb bathes in the mane of the lion. Wading arrogant in the threat. The sweet taste of carelessness like the scotch in father's words.

The squeeze of the socks around your ankles as you try to stand. It's just elastic and white cotton, but it makes such deep impressions.

You look at me and see a sparrow. Small, brown wings struggling against gravity. Too many feathers to remember. So many hollow bones. But you never ask, when I look at you, what it is that I see.

I don't listen anymore. The songs you tease me with.

Purple skies on the verge of opening up. The taste of curdled milk in your every breath. Like I deserved what you did to me. I was made for your pleasure. The dark enchantment of being used.

The pea wakes her up through all those many mattresses, but she still remembers who put it there.

Her dour prince.

Wearing the gown. Never to dance in it.

Wearing this fairy tale in every pore. This ever after so futile.

The gag of wine on your tongue as we tried to swallow what we hadn't chewed.

I choked on it.