She has a habit

They say she has a habit of counting scars not yet received

He knows that he should not look at her small crescent moon stomach that lacks the room for a byzantine womb at midnight illuminated through her nightgown by the light that shines down from his open window

She walks on the cracks in the pavement amongst the weeds in a sign of open rebellion against the gods long lost to this generation of heathen socialites

He drives along the pines on a country road unnamed and known only by the local natives, and forgotten by everyone else
until they buried the boy who didn’t want to wear a helmet
when the red man had amber liquid burning in his pot belly stomach
stronger than the stench of burning black rubber black crocodile tail tires

She looks at the fog in the mirror with the gold paint peeling off like butterfly wings with calculated indifference for the blood that had already stained
the cat ringed porcelain sink, what, she thinks, is another stain in this entropy filled hell

He leaves flowers that he picked from the public park on the doorstep of a home whose only inhabitants are ghosts
of a time when the family would sit around a worn wood table and say grace to a God who has not one son but many

She is a she, and so naturally she asks how can she be a son

He asks questions to the weeds that only the wind can answer

She wears the family ring strung along a cool metal chain






it leaves dark circles around her ivory neck it leaves their mark
to burn, choking her last remaining thread of innocence.
a neck of skin the sun has not touched since the fireflies
died in the same jar that his mother would pick the berries for and he would kiss
the plump little blueberries with missing front teeth
that, they say is for a girl to do, to suck, to sew, to spread

But she never learned to control her bleeding, and she doesn't want

His cold hands shake in the linen sleeved shirt that he bought for 3.99 at k-mart

I didn’t know they sold linen at a store that sells everything is a store to get lost in
but

She is always aware

For he is grappling with strangers he’ll never meet who will drink from the vein, his blood
test his sanity with pearl toothed smiles

who say that she has a habit of counting scars that only she can see on his perfect blue lipped
skin.