It blurs as dyes colliding
Until the mallard flock flurries
And the water swirls muddy
❧
When the riverbed reclaims its sediment
We collapse in stifled combining
Taint me until I’m something different
Blend me into something pretty
Photo by Andriyko Podilnyk on Unsplash
Only Entropy Comes Easy
Anton Chekhov
In the day
I create a breeze on the porch swing
Summer breathes shallow on the nape of my neck
The hot hands clasp my chest
Another daybright fragment coasts on the grass
Like a mallard, sparks splutter when I slam down the mallet
Like I’m forging it
And when the sickly orange rots, melts and flushes the clouds
Widowed heat radiates long after the sun is snuffed out
And swallowed, as the garlic-shaped buds plume up their pollen
My legs prick red by groping tongues of mosquitos
That come in fat clouds and swat like rain to the window
Supping up the blood
Spit in something that numbs
Attracted like the flushed-pink stomach of a lying dog in August
❧
In the night
Somewhere, a moth storms, desperate under lamplight
Somewhere else— darkness seeks out the darkness
I begin to drink
Tongue the drips rolling off my fingers
But not with soft brush
Careful blend of the watercolour,
Rather, Instantly pulse
Grasp like a sponge
Rinse and throw down the cup
The bowl of my hands
Outstretched for my ration of wine and not wafer
The bottle of amber ran almost empty
Tucked beside my bed
Its short-lived sympathy
A brief mattress boat that rolls
On nodding heads of the drink
The sky folds the reds in
And gold, sticky ring
At the bottom of the glass
The half torn poster rattling
Against the blades of the fan
Tomorrow, the sun will birth stairwells through the thick branches
Scold shadows on my eyes, the twisting dancers
Illuminate the mosquito clouds
Scatter them as dust blown when I pass
When I’m gone, rearrange and
Create a new shape
❧
I open my eyes
Skin thorned to gooseflesh
Head light and sloshing
Boat in the land, sunken
❧
I thought, maybe when I was young
On my floor, on a sheep rug,
With a pen and bound diary
“Dear twenty-four year old me”
Would she be disappointed,
Would her eyes widen at the sight of me?
I roll over to nobody
Outside— a distant, scorching firefly
of a cigarette
And the shallow breath of Summer on the nape of my neck
