Ouroboros

When I see you again, I imagine you’ll have breasts as if I gave you mine. Just like I gave you my shaving cream, fashion tips, and an accurate foundation shade. Like I gave you a thousand chances, ten times as many tears, and so much understanding like convulsing at your feet, a perverse holy rolling. And you looking down at me still not knowing what to say. Still. 

 

No gratitude or apology. Only broken, choking sounds stumbling from my lips as poison patience kills me like a slow overdose.

 

Remember? How like soldiers, we went by our last names to evade the taste of our false labels? How we were gonna crossdress at prom? Or that distant, blissful moment when we switched places and I held you in my arms? And for the width of one breath things felt okay, until the tension returned so finely wrought each blink was shattered glass—each touch a burning kiss-curse.

 

Now my thoughts rarely rest on you, and never linger. A trailing hand leaving a calling card for a stranger, gloves ensuring no fingerprints, no memory of my touch. No memory of your skin.

 

Just when I think I’m done, I dream of the bed depressing and I hear your voice call out my dead name. Your tone asking, Are you there?, and my silence giving answer. I realize my choking at your feet means I’ve become the dragon eating my own tail.

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Sommelier

 

Driving past a car accident, you don’t take a second look.

You say, “Someone died today.”

Then me, “A lot of people died today.”

"And a lot of people were born, and a lot just lived. We all get that. Talk about something new.”

Oh, well. Did you know, I often picture popping your eyeballs like a grapes between my teeth?

But I can only think it because my jaw still hurts from last week.