Through The Woods

black balloons. fragile strings. she tastes like yesterday. stiff with the arrogance of seldom lovers.

fingertips and eyelids. the molecules play their games. spurious wagers. that rarely have a winner.

the beginning. sweet candy houses. gentle axes. cut the hours from the bellies of wolves. the middle. dense forest. hungry witches. taste the children. the end. empty ovens. the stench of survival spoiling our desserts.

it's too long ago to still see that path. those breadcrumbs out of the forest. defer to the darkness.

the edge of the story is where it's sharpest. so we linger there. arguing with both ogres and princes. about the archetype of the victim. and the nature of the villain. sour with equations that mark both as irrelevant.

time is soft. much softer than science insists. it bends. it stretches. adapting its tumors to fill our holes.

we become our diseases. small infections flourish. we open our picnic baskets. ready to be eaten.