blushes

pen marks on my fingernails

The light outside of the city faded into a conscious, seething
heart of mistaken midwest identity. The end of summer roiled
me under the swamp of the sky. I drew lines on my fingernails
and hit the road with black boots, as if nothing did a thing for me,
as if nothing ever changed. The hunched and grayed woman
from down the street asked me, "How are you dear? This stop
is too much. They'll chase after you." After all these years,
she never escaped and lapped up the last of New York skyscraper
memories into the dust closet of her past.
Now they're chasing after me.

I penswirled my fingernails into a sharpshooter of oblivion.
I shifted the final packet of financial meltdown into my back pocket.
I walked away with grayed shoes and pen marks on my face,
the entire evening drizzled with pink fog, my past dumped on the curb.
I did it for you: the draw to lay in water in the heat of the dark,
the draw of tying back a fight. I tripped over cracks for you.
I jumped into the river without you.
I floated on my back the only way I knew how.

I waited for you by the sunrise of my schedule. Lightning
like a symphony around the city. It was my sunrise,
the heat lightning of the warming future. I swallowed
and took a good look, as I dipped into grass and glass.
The flattened city enveloped me.

Nothing ever got me the way dreaming knew how.
The way I faded in and out of consciousness, like a dying woman
waiting for her chance ticket at the right death. That startled me.
The certainty in each striking pain put me in a package.
I'm was there, under the aging, drawing pen marks on my fingernails.