Living Long Enough

And a whistle in, a rustle... Well, darling, it's just the wind.

As we try to carve a niche in the aftermath of Eliot's Waste Land. As we try and fight, we try and...well, darling, we survived. I'm underwhelmed but mystified. The nervous tics will tell. Our blood collects in puddles between the drops of rain. And I catch you bathing in the cleansing spill.

Ponce de Leon? Can you hear me still?

The doors collapse, the uniforms flood through alongside bullets and preconceptions, preconditions. Fundamental beliefs we could never argue against. Or with.

He says he likes long walks through, well, whatever. The underbrush will do. Among the snakes and leaves and crab apples and holes I bashed into your head.

Tell me you love me still.

An inviting hand extended to a prostrate corpse. Brother, will you stand? And if not, I could dig through my skin and claw out these very veins--if that's what it takes.

A cosmo in the summershine. A rum in winter climes.

Dumping poison after poison after perfect pissing choir boys drunk on the front lawn have said all they have to say on personhood and palpitations of the heart.

Tell me. You love me still.

It's only our souls I've been speaking of. That and leather straps I locked around your wrists. And all the things we'd forget given long enough.

You sway gracefully from blood puddles and back into the rain.