Dead Cows on the Median

Scabs of snot on her bed linens. Indicate where she hides her face while she sleeps. Stolen away from this world in small steps. Stewing in dreams she can't remember having ever possessed.

Making up sex in small gulps of friends. The ceremony of touch carrying on long after she has stopped counting. The years between. Then and now. Angry bears coming home to messy beds and missing porridge. Dead girls in worn stockings failing to reason with circumstance.

Pretending she had heard him when he said she didn't know what. A kite. Its long string teasing her hand. That she could touch the clouds. Move the sun. See again.

Power she muttered to herself. Control. This decrepit time machine in my head keeps trying, but I'm still not there. Nor any closer than I was.

I keep soliciting the cancer. It doesn't answer. I've scared the disease away again. I always do. Frighten it. Dark clowns with too much to smile about. Love is just the punctuation in this slow death.

The prayers of monsters make beautiful songs when I'm alone like this. Wondering which time I'm in. Which one I've left behind to be here. Negotiating with the me's I've created going back so many times to find what was never there.

My favorite part being the paradox. For all this to have happened nothing before it could have.

I keep trying on their faces. Moments of math rationalize the skin. In chokes of drug hoping I'll remember their collapsing heavens. Reconstruct. All the lies life creates to make these habits seem worthwhile.

Those tight jeans. They do fit. If I hold my breath deep enough.