Evolution in Detail

The nightmare was in the doorway. Sereptitiously taking its clothes off. Skin broken into syllables. Chunks of breath too small to hold all we'd said. The fingerprint was on the doorbell. Songs I so seldom hear. He took off his tie and hung himself with it. It was only then that I finally noticed the knot was wrong.

She was gathering her barbie dolls into factions. Keep and discard. More concerned with the war than its outcome. Fighting she presumed for reasons beyond her. The choke hold of high heels rewriting the heart. Into something contagious. Convincing the moment that all those fragments had once been whole.

I'm not hearing the words.

When they tell me it's hopeless I only hear ropes. Gods in gym class. Cruel teachers. The ceiling so far away. Lost faces like phosphorus and calcium. Make everything harder.

White paper drowning in ink. Broken closet doors negotiating with familiar demons. Skeletons slipping into tuxedoes of skin. What was mine. Flesh has all kinds of reasons. I'm just not one of them.