Sitting In The Meeting on the 1st Floor

The automatic hospital doors groan

revealing wasted eyes

landing on me

where I sit on my hands

in the waiting room. I can smell

the news on his breath.

He has been leaning

on a menthol kiss

in the parking lot. It is

the one thing

keeping him off

the floor.

Derby

Leading Lady falls

while we are watching from the infield.

Drinking dirt julips in strangers suits and ties.

Grace is crying. The ladies with the birds

on their heads would always get more attention

from the mud faced man. The one that she loves.

Covered in dust and cigar ash. That must have fallen down

from the box seats with the rain. Only cigarettes breathe down here.

Piles of white tickets, clutched and then forgotten

with the flash of a bulb. Black numbers adding up to

bus fare at best.

Melt

He was off

going 45 on the freeway

Not fast, but faster than you

You, at the door.

You, a glacier.

His tongue once reached

towards you, and stuck.

But he was not prepared

for your long winter. He pulled hard

heard the pop, smelled the blood.

Spitting red and choking

on taste buds.

You floated up the stairs

You, warm and beginning to melt down

the drain. You dripped.

He drove.

Not fast, but faster than you.

You in the tub

You, a pool

His tongue flopping

like a fish.

From a Brown Street Bathroom

A dreamcatcher floats

in a piss stained bowl. It did not catch my dreams

but it caught. Love

with no consequences. No 437 dollars.

I need to flush.

Instead I am craning my neck, so that I can see

myself in the mirror without standing up. Because I can hear

the band without getting off my couch. I can lock the door, say goodbye

without opening my mouth. But I cannot seem to pull the trigger.

Walk back down the seven mile hallway, past Bill’s smoke

cloud wall or Megan’s moans, to climb into a bed

covered in torn down posters from the seventh

grade, ripped and wrinkled, pull them over my head.

Put the period back in its place.