the murderer and the murdered

Phlegm-coloured guts hang out and I’m thinking about escargot. Body spasms, I think maybe there’s hope, but mainly I hope you’re dead. Shell shards and slime. One last shudder and I remember those half-dead jellyfish one always finds on the shore, hopelessly dependent on the vacillating tide. This isn’t very meaningful, you’re no tree’s last leaf, woefully lamenting its poetic sacrifice.

This is a little something I’ll forget about in less than an hour. But now I have tar on my tongue, death on my sole. Tiny as you are, forgive me for not seeing you there. Brief mourning, like who told you to surface after the rain, asking for it in the middle of the sidewalk? The earth spins at 460 metres per second, it’s a fast world, darling.

You were dead before I killed you, and you die again on the slick concrete, with the weeds popping up in the cracks, they share your plight of arbitrary soullessness.

My apologies in this poem.