all my efforts have failed to curb the browning of the
peace lily leaves’ tips.
the tips of
your fingers were white
before the thumbs went grey as an elephant on contact
with
the frozen ladder rungs.
the whites of your eyes were not white
next to the crook-armed moon as you forced your body
down that frozen slide.
excessive
water goads the leaves
into pantomimes of drowning. thirst turns the flower
stems to straw,
white flowers
hidden by browned foliage.
I have tried raising the blinds on fine days, I have
tried unrelenting darkness
but light is neither the question nor
the answer. it is to be another week of misery for me,
another week of feeling
nail
butts soldered onto my pupils,
looking at those withered apexes the way one looks at
the legs of a burnt spider.
I return to the soaked back of your dress,
I return to the slivered moon of underwear beaming
through the soaked red polyester,
coat, stilettos strewn across the tanbark.
probably we are too old now to fuck ourselves up and
make a clandestine exit
from the big party to go and play.
I cannot look up at hairy wrists and crosshatched
bulging veins on the monkey bars,
and when I look at your back I see death
and this is how I know I will die a long time from now,
alone, repulsed, and hated.
in all my efforts to curb the decay
I choose not to notice that the leaves, though
brown-tipped, grow as never before.
