Sean Thomas Dougherty
After we were fired from the hospital
we dove into Prince.
We shot junk & ate junk food
& watched MTV for weeks.
The lengthening of our shadows
ground down my teeth.
We fucked on the bare mattress
with our future now behind us.
All the noise was brilliant, a radio
in my brain I tuned to the station
I hummed the beautiful static of tiny pills.
I peeled the torn red wall paper
& wrote my dairy of the amber rain
on the scraps... Outside, a fire escape
that led to an alley.
I’d climb down to stare at the brick wall.
I folded my body into an envelope
& mailed it to the department of dead letters.
~
Stories are seeds & the circus
of us was like a trapeze
of sunflowers, bowing
in the deserted lot of decades
beside the closed
down paper mill—
maybe the dope man wouldn’t arrive—
for you the matchstick girl
by the side of the road.
I refused to betray
like the small wooden figurine
of the Black Madonna you clutched
in your coat pocket. Luck
in little ways, you always said.
To protect us—
like the glint of a blade.
We used to cut the cord.
When you kissed you tasted
like peppermints
you stole from the bowl
of every clinic counter.
You my crushed orchid—
How we trembled
like the lighter’s flame
to the bent spoon
of our bodies—