Homogenized Heavens

We were buying our salad one leaf at a time. Painting the lettuce the colors of dead animals. Imagining time travel in one kiss increments. Small prescriptions of salvation in doses expensive enough to swallow. In orange bottles with our names printed on them. Like there is a plan. Even if it's only the one we've made.

I was listening to the song wondering whatever happened to turning left without permission. The arrow is what I covet. Go. Go now. As fast as you want. The others. They have to wait. Rubbing their dirty stones between their fingers as my heels scrape the chalk that drew these frail competitions under our feet.

We were sitting at the bar. Imagining the food was better. Or that we hated each other less. Certain that the stools were lower than we remembered. Or that the clock on the wall was in the last stages of rigor mortis.

So many dead things between us.

All beds were a morgue. All eyes coroners. In fabulous funerals I'd watch as though they were my own.

Medicated moments twist lives into tiny knots.

Not to be undone. Too many mistakes we'd regret so much more had we never made them.