Red-Skin Nightmares

&& he screams at her in the dead of night:
"you put words in my mouth
and they taste like candy burned brittle,
crumbling skittles and starburst wrapper ashes
singeing my tongue."

his eyes are like fire as she slams the door
with a hand to her aching cheek;
but lord, how can she hate him
when he talks like a poem gone astray?

oh, and he wakes up with a bad taste in his mouth
like the decayed flavor of an infected needle
spreading disease from his teeth to his toes;
he remembers her smile and the neon light tattoo parlor
that traced love in black ink under his skin.

and all for nothing,
because his bed is cold and there's a girl-sized dent
that isn't going to go away,
no matter how many vodka shots he takes.

&& red-skin nightmares scribble over his once-perfect love,
falling stars, meteor showers turning photographs into smoldering ashes
on the rooftop where she used to sit
on summer nights when her heart was bruised, beaten bloody,
filling her mouth with the taste of iron.

'cause she couldn't take the way he faded into the night
like a camoflauge soldier fighting a war that
she didn't believe in;
oh, maybe he was fighting for her but
it sure looked like he was drowning in the agent orange,
slipping into his own quicksand traps and she couldn't pull him out.

no, she couldn't sober him up
so she dragged him through the snow and rain
until it was just too too hard to carry him
up the stairs;
it was just too tiring to fake that smile,
to watch herself turn to glass every morning in the mirror
[everything is just fine, she'd say --
i tripped on the ice, hit my face on the sidewalk,
aren't i just so clumsy?]

&& she was just so sick of that same old story,
her once-favorite record scratched,
skipping, repeating repeating repeating the words
that she hopes she'll never hear again.

so she eats to make up for the way she'd been
wasting away for him;
she smiles as she thinks
maybe this next man will be the one.

'cause there's always that hope,
that fire burning behind her ribs
praying that this time the record will play through
and finish the song with a crescendo.

that maybe this next one will love me.