soda-sticky fingers past my waistband 

on nights when female eyes cut through me

you lean against a tin chapel

you’re leaned over the kitchen sink

copper and cowboy-mouthed

windows braiding flaxen light across your shoulders 

i’ve been split in two persons:

you and I, wriggling twin larvae

bleeding blue into polyester

Tiger-eyed and lambent, pulled down by soaked clothes,

incarnadine the sea with me, my love.

I am not a bad person.

I find love at the end of the world

I imagine we’re on the train bound for Georgia

i. there’s a cigarette stain blistered on the lampshade and i still remember the oil spill in your eyes.

i wonder if it’s sadism or ignorance          

she comes by the seaside wearing nothing but swim trunks