--YOU MUST BE EXHAUSTED

                                      

                                  A Story of Feathers

You asked for my hands, so I sliced them off as if they were two stubborn husks of corn. 

You asked for my tongue, so I brandished a rusty jackknife and cut it out, too. 

You asked for my (…), but I missed the circumcision completely.

Stubborn acrylic.  All this crimson, viscous along the stools, dries in the shallow of its own volition. 

But isn’t that the way they say it goes?

The clock keeps chuckling.  A stitch in time having lost its one reliable chronometer. 

The barren goalpost curtsies, swapping palms over both bony kneecaps comedically.  

The sky is cracked, like a Tarot reader’s burst pupil. 

Our Luna can’t stop sobbing.

And so, the shucked feathers fall where they may, like gray-white Post-it Notes, MURDER written on every one. 

If only you were here to witness the slaughter.   

I think you’d agree there’s nothing else to call this, but the world’s greatest love story.