Distant Clown Faces

Little girls with their eyes closed. Dresses on their chins. Greeting the tornado with their lips. Nothing to blame. Futures on burning houses. Searching for the fire escape. Little girls with their feet sewn together. Stumbling. Carefully toward Bethlehem. Falling down.

On Satan's porch. With angels in empty hands.

Near enough. She was certain. Arguing with the physics. Of the dying having a future. Years. To cover these corpses. In the dirt displaced by so many dead men.

Culling the trenches from shreds of skin. She left behind in her hurry to forget him.

The mania of the prude. To quench her temptations. Swollen thighs crossing a broken bridge. The machine cold as it idles on standby. Her thumb fierce with a future she's only glimpsed.

She knows. Or so she says. Why tomorrow forgets us.

She knows because it's told her.

It can't wait.