a freshly-cut cross-section of a penis, pressed against a glass so you can see its inner workings. through all the blood, of course. a rope left over from a strangling victim in the early eighteen hundreds. the powdered wig of a now-discredited member of parliament. rotten eggs with dark colored rot-marks in the shapes of celebrities. the first hundred dollars made by henry ford’s assembly line. the way you washed your hands of the whole thing, but never could get your soul white again. smells wafting up from the street below. it seems like a hundred years ago. the shower was broken. the toilet was rusted out. everything but my love for you covered in dust or woodshavings from the mill upstairs.

i was an acid. i was a clear day in southern california. i felt the way gophers feel. the way mules kick. the way old men rock on their porches and watch everyone else go by. i’d had it all figured out from day one.

your hair was a tangle of barnthorns. your dress was the way the sky looks in deep winter. february snows reflecting all that light right back at god. stoplights moving much too quickly for anyone to get across. she danced across our living room. out onto the fire escape. the morning the money came in. it wasn’t much. a few thousand dollars. she wanted us (and by “us”, i mean “me”) to buy a motorhome and move down south. stopping every so often along the highway to pick up flowers. bringing them back inside. preserving them in some kind of flammable concoction. molotov cocktails of stems, petals and nectar. we’d drank hundreds of jars of the stuff by the time we hit south carolina.

animals stripped of their habitat. onlookers stripped of their comforting excuses. all exits out of the town blocked by state troopers. velvety people slid towards us. exuding a kind of greenish light. it collected in pools, which joined and formed rivulets on the side walk. store windows broken by crazed deer. we picked up axes to protect ourselves.

chemistry can be a funny thing.