thirst

fat flakes fall and scorch my
face with the promise of the
cold, and it awakens an age-old
thirst in me

but i can see what others do not
see in this terrible snow-scape

and i drink a disguise,
poison-white.
i am dry, and i drink,
although i die.

i was never one to heed
warnings. it's the danger in these
things that turns me on, although
i must pay. i always pay for
the mistakes i make, and this one
is no exception.

strychnine.
the shards of your fine
china cut me up inside.

it is a terrible thing to have
gone this way, without heeding
the caution tape, without heeding
the signs, but it could not have
been prevented.

my fault, my fault.
so this is how it must end,
a ruin, a blotch on this fine ground.
do not walk over me. even though i can't see
i can feel your every reprimand

as it continues to snow.
soon, i will be buried below and
hidden from sight. they will not
remember the girl who tried to fill
her thirst with some bad trick.

they will not remember the way i died.

Thirty-Two

Where is the fanfare?
Where are the streamers, where
is the champagne
to announce to the world,
I am here?

It has not been that much of a
celebration this year.

I tell myself it's because only the
important people care,
that it's garish to display one's age.
My hair may be gray, but I still have
the same fresh skin that I
had at eighteen,

although I smoke.
(Someday, the years will catch up to
me. The day I stop getting hit for
ID is the day I act my age.)

If I am so grand, then I have to be known
and it hurts that I am not so large to the world.
I may be deluded in my importance, but today
was supposed to be about my name,
and it wasn't, and so I am mad.

Delivery

Standing in the bitter cold on the
corner of Gottingen Street, the transfer
truck caught my eye from
it's sheer size.

I looked inside.
The carcasses of cows, split
in half, filled the back.

It took two people each to
unload them. I saw their great
ribs, curved upward,
a tangle of hooves, and their
parched dry insides.

A butcher shop delivery,
highlight of my day.
I have never seen anything
quite like that before and
probably will never again

and I remember
that fresh, sharp smell
of meat.