Let me soil my fortune on crimson-licked love
& your fox face.
My prayer opens rehearsed bone, you incise
through the marrow & drink it,
let the keyhole ritual eat me whole. Not that I like
it, I just want to remember
what it’s like with your fingers slipping through
my soft bone. How elegant
you seemed to be when you took the knife
& twisted it.
Back home, you grinned &
pointed out a ridge in the flatness
of the horizon, a single heartbeat rising for
breath quickly, stilted only by the
trembling of the heat— the dead man walking.
Emptiness thriving.
Your throat smeared against my chest &
cracked apart the gaping cavity,
birthed back the caustic ache. You held me
straight & fell forward into
my spine, bared your glassy teeth, & bit.
Teddi Haynes is a student at Orange County School of the Arts in Southern California. She has previously been published in Inkblot Literary Magazine.
VAGABOND CITY 