Lightning Bugs

Bad doggies. On three paws or less. Their tails chase them. In that common conundrum of physics. Where there is the key to the door, but the handle is absent.

She writes to God in long confessions. The dead girl. Wrestling with the locks on her wrists. The combinations in her head. Life she confesses arrives. Mostly in empty breasts and torn underpants. All my suicides. A mockery. Of walls. Long since demolished.

She kisses Satan on the cheek. As a thank you for so many wonderful sins. Touch is such a fickle paradise. And I've spent all my fingers on finding the zipper.

I have none left with which to open it.

The barking dogs. The thirsty balloon on its string. Slipping from a child's fist. Draws on the sky. In broken colors.

The angle by which you hit the drum determines the sound. But not who hears it.

I stop looking. I don't listen. And then I know. Which graves to dig up. And why they are dead.

God and Satan debating the blood I've spilled. To discover the keys. They each offer me the doorway. One an entrance. The other an exit. To the same empty room. I've always been in.