cigarette constellations

the philharmonic prose of a five dollar scream: rigel

he's midnight's defib
shakes sunlight from between her ribs.

he's the butterfly between ferrari red lips. three inches of caramel coffee and cream that rests there like a burden, spilling smoke like a chimney. he's that space on the pavement where she sits like sin, and hides her virtue beneath her fingernails—what she doesn't bite away, she carves, paints, into the valley between his shoulder blades later.

he's her artist. the brushwork of french rose on her inner thigh. the tantalizing grip of raw russet possessing her hips. the wrinkled tarp of the bed against her bare back, white like chantilly lace and they've got nothing but la salle green desire in their—his eyes. he calls her name, a libido-laced tongue that chants a reverberated rhapsody. the philharmonic prose of a five dollar scream.

he's the silence of the lambs and the roar of the lion. the see-saw sashay of too short satin and the melody of closed-car doors and indecorous susurration. he's the infiltrator, like new york street rats, but she gave him the green light—a mumble of counterfeit seduction for the jade in his wallet and now all she can see is red.

red.
her lips
her dress
the lace material
of her lingerie,
the after kiss keepsake
on his collarbones,
the soft silk
shame that
trembles beneath
her composure.

he's more than one. he's monday with rum-rimmed eyes looking for a g o o d t i m e. and tuesday in a suit with a wedding band and vows beneath his calvin klein tongue. he's wednesday and a haze till saturday, a sedated blue of lamenting morals and cigarette smoke, a reminiscence of dior and delectation. he's the cure to injured living so when sunday comes along, she's open like alley walls.

she lets him paint her in gratifying graffiti.

he's the cleansing. the enigmatic, incandescent redemption. a rampaging reservoir of chagrin and black chamomile suds, a saponaceous contrition of a potent meteor shower. the raw, unfiltered sacrifice that she scrubs from her skin. the steam that obstructs her lungs, kills her will to breathe. the pollution of light that occludes her view of celestial nirvana. he's the sacred water that she shivers in, that she drowns in, that she weeps in. the desperation that clings to her lashes like balcony admirers, trickles from her hair like slaughtered stars.

the milky way galaxy on a suicide mission.

he's the designer, her creator. he carved her from the slanted marble island of overturned narcotics and shimmied her into diaphanous divinity- skimpy scarcity- and told her that she had a pretty mouth. he showed her temptation and let it kiss her, languidly at the onset, like slow sunrise on a popsicle. but then suddenly, calamitous and liquefying, like ice amidst a volcanic eruption.

by then, temptation wasn't just a french kiss but an orgasmic repetition, a world where she'd trade pleasure for pennies and sanity for meaningless sheet symphonies. trade authentic adoration for a cacophony of comforter rendezvous and vacant gratification.

he made her what she is.

not a soul, just a body.
not a soul, just a body.
not a soul, just a body.

a code-blue cataclysmic cluster of cocaine-laced constellations in a body bag. and it was a choice. a sun-splattered panorama waning into rain washed effulgence. it was a decision. a lemon sun and clear, cloud coated mural dimming into a construction paper cut out and sallowed out cotton swabs. her decision. a time stamped gas station, staggering bright lights fading into an analgesic avenue. flickering fluorescence and dwindling innocence. crooked signs and crumbling concrete.

dismantled morality decked in last night's ephemeral euphoria, she'll stand there again.

not a soul, just a body.
not a soul, just a body.
not a soul, just a body.