Bone & Ink Press

No one knows the distances we traveled, how you exhaled smoke towards the rising sun and told me     a crow crossed  your path and translated our future, spoke to you of nesting dolls, balalaikas, white     amber that would boil over then simmer until our own sorceress would appear with porcelain cups     and milk.

Do you remember the heat-stroked evenings we laid spent like wrinkled bills exchanging hands for the last pint of beer? How it rained every night but we held one another by each other’s dream through it?

You said you missed fireflies how you used to catch them in cupped hands as a kid they flickered in and out lit up your palm lines I said, maybe they were reading your fortune

It’s a looped memory. Things fall apart, second string boys swim between us. I wanted to be like Ava and Lana, who shared more than cigarettes and lipstick.

All Hallows Eve’s upon us all once more:

Her Daddy would have been among the guisers once, when he was a young man. Lizzy backed away, fearful of their rowdiness. If her Daddy were there, he'd have taken her little hand in his big calloused hand and he'd have told her that no one there would hurt her, that it was all just a game. Just boys having a bit of fun.

the night’s silver breath stings

I grew up in a haunted house. It’s not so bad, it’s not like what they depict in the movies, all possession and nightmares and slamming doors (although that did happen once). It’s more like there’s something in your house that’s trapped there, confused and lost, trying to communicate to someone, anyone, so that they can gain a tether in the darkness. Something familiar that they can latch onto, some sign of life in the ether.

i’m / looking at you, / shadows painting / skull-sockets like war paint / and eyes that want / to swallow the world / as how the void / wants to swallow you.

In the end, however, my “bride” left me for Dracula, that asshole. She said it was because he was always so impeccably dressed. He even wears a cape. A cape! I told her, do you really think there’s room for two in that dumb coffin of his? She said she doesn’t care. That she’ll happily sleep on the floor, or even a bed if she has to. She said she likes his sense of style. Apparently, I have no sense of style.

fun fact / you can love dead things / in any way you want / tenderly / hard / terribly

He received a postcard from his sister in the mail that afternoon. The glossy front depicted the twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, suckling from the teats of the she-wolf. He pondered a theory remembered from a college elective on Ancient History. Linguistic evidence linked the she-wolf to an ancient sex worker who took pity on the twins. Tenderness and compassion threaded delicately into the violent tapestry of Roman foundation myths.

For when the winds come, when they come

He opened some beers, and we sat at the kitchen table, drinking and talking. He told me how cheap everything was in Vermont, and we reminisced about our apartment on Highland Ave. It was good to see him again. He had grown a beard, and there were streaks of gray in it. But other than that, he was the same as he’d always been.

October thunders the roof,

The once bare mound sprouted grass, a reminder that time didn't stop to mourn any death. The white lilies left on the day of the funeral had long ago browned and shriveled and turned to dust. I didn't replace the flowers, instead leaving bouquets of memories.

Dead leaf, devil's flower, I don't believe