Abacus Rosaries

The sky would open in a back-stroke motion,
one french door after the next;
we watched in a isolation-tanked white silence
as our best selves
rose and fell with the morning fog,
and we were both Anne Sexton, crying
“THEIF!

WHY DO YOU 

GET TO DESEND INTO
THE DEATH
WE ALWAYS WANTED,
ALONE?”

We both knew we’d never ask for more,
if we didn’t already know that we could have it all,
but we sharpen our tongues with electric contraptions made by Black and Decker,
and we drain our Molasses-infused veins into freshly-baked holographic cookies we’d force-feed to one another as I’d cry,
“ARE YOU MY YELLOW BIRD?”
And you’d blush through your pants pocket
and blossom in my hands
in hues of “DON’T STOP” and “JUST LIKE THAT”
and we’d look through one another’s gilded frames,
eyes turning to their symmetric partners-in-crime
and looking back in on us, begging,
“IS THIS YOUR YELLOW BIRD?”

Our pinkies were lost in the fire,
and we’d wonder,
“ARE YOU THE CURE
OR THE CAUSE?”
Our pinkies were lost in the fire,
and we knew these could never be mutually exclusive,
so we’d count our failures on abacus rosaries 
in tones of “JUST THIS ONCE” and “WHY NOT?”

Our best selves grinning,
waving back at us with an eloquent elegance
that we couldn’t even touch through digital simulation, 
as we squinted
and could see nothing
beneath our sky 

that was busy holding hands with the gilded analog clock that stood

directly between the times of the oil-slicked night
and the UV sunrise,

just as the first few fistfuls of stars began to spark. 

Let’s twist-open-pop-swallow-poppoppopPOP-close-repeat one another,
save bits for later,
so we can be both the CURE and the CAUSE,
exist in a florescent orange-encased romance,
contort ourselves into swallows of white;
hide behind our prescripted debris of precisioned prose.

The sky would open in a back-stoke motion,
and we’d squint at it,
seeing nothing but flocks of
yellow birds 
in every direction.

Author's Note

unfinished