i could taste her with my fingers
feel her sweltering tongue
like a red field burning
until our lives fell to snow
grottoes icy labyrinth
dismantling us
a bone at a time

we studied each others
shifting decrepitude
watching each other rot
naked, twisting to white ashes
like a fiction of flickering transparencies
drawn faces slope downwards
every day
a dark-eyed Halloween
and i cant hear her voice

still a giddy pig
with shit talk
floundering in the mud
laughing about death
my heart is a secret terror
my breath tangled in your words
every syllable like a pound of grain
breathing black pebbles

I'm facing destiny
a dark jazz
like all before me
and you
my beloved
until all is parched dust
with
one of us still left standing
haunted by the absence of the other