a glove
wet baseball cap
shards of glass
Glove, does the hand miss you?
the bike wheel squeals
at the dirty fur and a broken tail
a piece of truth
flattened
a voice peeled off the humid air
leaving it crisp
poor Birds, it says,
they always think it’s the morning
The cement pavement
a desert with stale sand
holds the heaviness of a thousand globes
filled with the grainy flesh of August
and dull echoes of sweetness
She cuts one open
splashes of dry sugar
the same sound when the earth splits
The air was withering as it passed through the dusty window pane.
Nothing answered the monotune of the rolling suitcase.
A pair of black high heels tapped impatiently until a gaze ridiculed them.
Two hands spread the newspaper: small headline fonts.
All that was happening in the world shrank next to the thin yellow sign:
PASSENGERS MUST PURCHASE AND
VALIDATE TICKETS PRIOR TO BOARDING THE TRAIN
I look out of the window: slate roofs, snow
Patches of pale green and paler pink
Pigments the old man once chose
to paint the lotus flowers
on white silk
When the paint dried
he raised the scissors and followed
the imagined contour of a body
He was tailoring a gown
that now sits in my suitcase
two thousand miles above the ground
Are you getting married?
He asked with a tape measure around my waist
No, I am just going away.
I lived with a lizard named Hank — a Geico, I mean, sorry, a gecco. Once someone misnamed Hank, Gary. One day, as he tanned under the heat lamp, I looked through his skull. Translucent, brainless, airy. He was trampling on his plant. It was a nice plant. He was killing his nice plant, not knowing that he was killing his nice plant. That’s what I wanted to tell you. Look, my jellyfish just died. My jellyfish had no brain, either. I don’t know why I tell you this. Out of the stubbornness of hands. Out of the absence of mind. Out of a question, maybe.
jue[at]lemony.space