Nearly dry: a lone rose descending head first from a piece of twine, double tied.
In absence of Atropos, we are partners in infinite crime.
We are gathered here with the window open, on cold linoleum creaking.
Through voodoo blinds the Christian neighbors peeking. When she flew her airplane into me
It all felt so inevitable: the burns on my wrists, her taste in my mouth
The burns on my ankles. How in my last life I was hanged
And how I was hanged the life prior. How we tried and tried.
I don’t know what to feel anymore, save for the wholly ghostly echo of petals coming
Down hard, coming down singular, all around the kitchen table.
My voice, a bomb trapped inside a blazing elevator, fails
And fails to combust. Father, forgive us. Demons, evacuate. Nearly Beloved
Take my oxygen mask: I’ve said my vows already.