Bargaining Bones

soft scabs listen for the u-turn.

the journey happens. in used matchsticks and dirty bedsheets. smoke and cum. the perfume of love and crisis. stubborn ghosts wasting their pastels drawing flowers and flames.

it's cold. it has to be. the arrogant cancer of touch sweeps us up in its disease. the cure comes in colors. no words. just sweating angles. swallowed up in the inertia of the people we've become.

shedding the numbers. the vague math of broken needles and open windows. petitioning the darkness. in simple equations. ambivalent strokes of submission. quietly poison each moment.

until the sickness becomes a blessing.

the ballad of time. slow and soft. as it stabs. a gentle murder.

not falling.

just letting the gravity win.

the distance. here and there like separate worlds. the apogee. the blink of the sober. as it draws us into itself.

the falling leaves. the roiling seasons. of skin and choice. a withering exchange of flesh. and the outlines it imposes. these unfamiliar skeletons sneak inside us. changing the shape of everything.