COWBOYS DON’T CLEAN KITCHENS

SARAH KAARINA

Tyres trace the dirt. Grounded.
 
She slips in and out of trance,
to pass the days in movement, waiting
 
silence gains traction,
 
you have months to figure out what takes most a life to realize.
 
The dawn is punishing, the night inviting
neither of you like the taste of morning,
she pushes dusk on your tongue, she
lets cracks of moon slide down your throat
 
fervor never satiates.
 
On days she should want you,
you melt cruelly,
and when you seek her for that accidental moment
her blood races,
deluded romanticism of snow.
 
But, you whisper to each other:
 
freedom calls for love’s quick death.
 
So she slides you off her shoulders,
hangs you in a home that always calls your name
yet you should be the one:
 
homeric
 
in his departure
longing sighs of treble clef felt across an ocean,
 
uneasy
 
when clean sheets and tender hands
stroke you in those slumbered hours.
 
The two of you stand
feet hip width apart
one eye fixed on the other’s,
 
a lingered pause fades into quivering hands
 
 
;
 
 
you wonder if she’ll wash this blood from your collared shirt,
make amends for your untimely death.
 
With dying breath you whisper
 
“something that sounds like longing”
 
rubber pushes gravel stone to make way for speed.
 
In the rear view mirror
just a ghostly corpse splayed naked on desert sand
 
rot
 
in the heat of abandon.