We’ve Taxidermied The Wrong Choices

  Remapping the route back to Brattleboro, our footfalls shudder like a shot of neat whiskey. We can’t be real when memory gets blackout drunk. Let’s step off-sync, wind-up toy soldiers set loose, split seconds apart. Bearskin is filling my eyes with sweat. You’re the saltlick, where every buck wants to take a good slobber. These woods blister with silence. It began when oral history caught venereal from truths rubbed into lies. New feelings can’t lichen over what we remember. It’s easier if you swirl past in a triple-hooped skirt and hood to execute your own murder. Stay for a slow waltz. I’ll bite the sea pearl off your earlobe. Swallow it down, because unbalanced corpses can’t unzip God’s clouds. This jewel settles my guts forever, as my weepy heart rides your ribs’ bell jar. Our lives tether in gory symmetry, still you barrel down the path, careless as I follow.