A Few Short Words

Silvered skin, gleaming red under fluorescent,

spilling still into porcelain stains, pooling in coagulate.

Sickly, slick, sticking substance, splayed,

corner

to

corner.

Saline mingling rivulets, descending, descry intention,

weep without retention, trailing mucky streams.

Rose complexion uninhabited, departs. A blended mask,

red, ivory, deformed. Persephone blooms.

Peripheral darkness, looming, encroaching empty orbs,

thrashed to throes. Fibrous spittle fleck adorned reflection

captures silent cadences, now emptied momentarily.

She says hold me

with her eyes

and whispers promises

with her hands.

Her skin speaks to me

in dulcet tones

and my heart sings

at the sight of her.

She says nothing

and it means the world

to share her silence.

The skies are dark and my eyes are heavy.

I think of her on days like this.

Better in bed than driven indoors.

I watch her eyes and stroke her hair

as she speaks of the future.

‘It’s supposed to rain,’ she says.

Storm clouds roil over us.

Sky borne somnambulists,

stalking the air, boding.

I whisper nothings

into the nape of her neck

and ask her,

‘Do you like the way that sounds?’

She just sighs amid the silence and lies.