The Weight of a Shadow

No tomorrow. No down the stairs. Only the scraps dredged from dirty fingernails. Of yawning breasts and epileptic thighs. You want it and I give you the art of humiliation. At any price you name.

We count the passengers disembarking the bus. Dull school children dancing on the finger of the blade. Leeches in every glance. Wearing the parasite. The grim astonishment of puberty the skin remembers in every lunge. The thrill. The thrust of high heels in each touch. Blood on crutches. Hobbling the endless course of our bodies. Until every last stop is vacant.

Wearing our hearts in rented tuxedoes. Long conversations with parties where I wasn't invited. The thump of sober in my chest while we surrendered everything. In brushes of daffodil. In pantomines of perfume. The world paused only a moment to wait before shuffling off without me.

Pale ankles showing over their black socks in an avalnche of men. Forever jamming their keys into the wrong locks. The weight of a shadow the most I could measure. And more than I could lift.