he was always so proud of his new coffee jack,
and of how the blood — coffee — filtered
through his daily chagrin. that evening, he
bought a few blue moon beers, but he didn’t
drink them. they were purely for cleaning his
cuts and scrapes. he took champagne-soaked
strawberries by the fistful and stuck them in
the old bullet holes. with Debussy’s Claire de
Lune groaning behind him, he phoned me to
say farewell.
faced with the prospect of death, he peeled off
his face and lay it on the table. is this what you
want, he’d ask. your pain is killing me. on the
other end of the phone, I heard his screams as
he smashed every vintage wine bottle he owned.
the flesh came away from the bone, and his eyes
popped out and fell into his hand with green glass
shards.
among his caterwauls, I heard the thumping of the
strands of my hair hitting his skin. oh, how I wanted
to die too. I felt the spirit of Juliet inside of my aching
bones, marred by devils and disease. when they found
him, the bathwater had been running for many hours,
a soapy emerald. my body feels like a permanent scab.
it walks into the café’s of starlight cities and begs men
to take all the pain away. their bodies aren’t the same,
nor are their dicks, but it’s all I have to keep me from
begging for clicks.
Originally published in Pink Plastic House
Courtenay's Corner 