ass skinned from a skateboarding trip,

cement’s sting/kiss: your loose, unbelted jeans. your maroon

smile missing

 

a tooth, your night spent with malt liquor.

you smoked until you were syrup, until you couldn’t stand up;

you bedded

 

in a stranger’s trunk, limped to me in the dawn.

i cottoned you with peroxide. you steered us to breakfast,

slightly tempted

 

by each telephone pole, but a blown red light

resulted in the smack. across my temple, blooming airbag bruises.

that afternoon,

 

your fetal curl on the gurney. surgeons needed

to comb your tangled intestines. the waiting room payphone

was a metal ghost.

 

around midnight, i muted qvc. problem:

i tempered your death-wish, but, unsure of the cure for instinct,

couldn’t end it.