Exit Wound, Upper Left Chest
Once you told me of a dream you had
in which you lost all your hair in one shower.
You did not want to hear what I had to say
about the nature of biblical visions, but only one
of us still has all their wisdom teeth, so who’s
to say who got the worst of it. Some people like
the taste of orange juice after brushing, you’d say,
so I took to drinking my coffee on the porch.
You were itching for somebody new to kill,
but by then there wasn’t anyone but me left.
And now there are rooms in my mind I can’t
sleep in because they are where you live.
If I go back to the duck pond will you still be
a crack shot? If I go back to the gun range
will our names still be carved into the pigeons?
I can still picture the high spots of red on your cheeks
in the winter, how they looked pressed against brick.
The back of your head trembling as we waded though
the knee-deep snowfall. Your heavy knuckles
on the neck of your guitar and mine on the loose
fraying waistbands of your plaid boxershorts.
You, as you were, somewhere on the seaboard,
just barely starting to go bald, and me, here,
eating satsumas whole on Christmas Eve,
choking on the pith and the rind and the seeds.
S. Cristine is a poet living and writing in Los Angeles. Her preoccupations include the passage of time, double-trunked trees, and why bottles of honey are always sticky no matter what. She has lived in Boston and London, and is currently working on her first chapbook.