NAPOMO, day two

phone call

licking panic off my lips

     uttering the

               swollen words I wish i’d said

 

when I talk

         to you

i’m always stiff as yesterday’s cake

 

I sit here and eat the

       silence

like sky and caramel

 

we’ve rotted in this embrace

 

and now you spend time

     cursing in the corner

         and looking up at the

                  ceiling as if it has all the answers

 

we’re sitting under this

           plague blanket

brick bruises on our hearts

                  refusing to say the words we mean

         and saying all the ones we don’t

 

——-

Lisa Holcomb 1998