Overwintering is the want. The rhizomes are dying in their beds with shriveled arms & someone is severing their legs. The narcissus has a personality disorder, turns purple, green, then purple again. It’s a bruised eye, summer’s hummingbirds are alive in my shoulder blades & the starlings have nested in the gutters, the sky is a torn blue tarp & I am the wetness beneath it. I crawl into the fireplace & eat the ash, my skin is fire tough, is thick cresol. I imagine you’re in the casino gambling on clothes, loose change, change falls hard, comes harder. Remember how when we met, you could not come at all, before long you were coming twice. But, if there is a god, he does not reward, he is a drunk in a dive, attached to a motel & the 3am last call is approaching, he is fucking the last girl with her molars showing, submerged in half an eggshell. And somewhere in her college dorm your daughter is having a train run on her, is an auto erotic asphyxiation game, she is the hangman, a comma being erased.
Helen Vitoria
hvitoria@msn.com
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov