—THINGS ONLY GO AWAY

                                              Step In.  Step Closer.

         I have been kissing your dusty ghost again, sucking on that dry, parchment paper tongue, looking through your sockets and holes, slow dancing with your rickety skeleton while the bones clatter like dull wind chimes no one would bother hanging.

I wish you would look at me the way I’m staring at you.  Yes, it’s true, I’m a little loopy on Cabernet, maybe hallucinating some, picturing you in white, stepping on that too-long train your mother tried to convince you not to wear.  But you look ravishing again, my one and only bride.

In a moment, we’ll cut the cake, each of us with one hand clasped over the spatula, slicing careful so as to miss the miniature bride and groom.  I’ll smear the pedal of a frosting rose on your nose, lick it off quick, but your father will notice and shoot me a disapproving look.

But for now, let’s just dance, let’s sway.  It’s been too long since I’ve held you like this.

Step in.  Step closer.  The hole in the back of your skull hasn’t healed, that’s okay.  It never will, so I cover it with my palm and place your head on my shoulder, gentle as a newborn.

Let everyone gawk if they want.  They don’t know you’re not dead.  They don’t know we’ve got a full night, a full life ahead of us.  Only I know that.

            WARNING LABELS FOR ORDINARY PEOPLE

Brother says, We are ordinary people.  He says this as he chews on the dog’s tonsils, squirting purple juice between his teeth. 

Older Sis is making a shrunken head from little Sis’s body.  She’s boiling the head in a kettle on the stove that keeps farting foul air and hissing like a snake.

Dad is writing warning labels on his pupils with an ice pick.  BEWARE OF DOG.  HOT SURFACE, DO NOT TOUCH.  WATCH YOUR HANDS AND FINGERS.

Mom is making lasagna with feta cheese layered over ruffled pasta sheets, and in between those, equal parts lacerated postman and old boyfriend who shouldn’t have shown up yesterday.

Me, I’m writing a horror story about a family so tortured by life that they have to sleep for hours at night, evening after evening, still as mummies.