By Peter Davidson 

There was a collage you’d made and it

was peeling. Little trucks and grey pills

and wax plastic mannequins.

When you made the collage I said I

feel like rotting ice which was because

of the TB scare. Spindles and pins were

everywhere we felt like wool. We felt

like bowling.

We were in trains, were in Spain.

We were breathing the fast breath of

showers and we were dead.

You spraypainting the underpass

into an octopus and six black beaks and

the mouth.

Your wrist is split and you paint the walls

white with your kiss. I remembered a can.

Is tin. Is paper plate is glue.

I can see your

eyes going green and I know this is

Delaware. Carve me a lilac. It’s Sunday.

We stayed too far from the dam. I know.

You scare, you give, you claws.

My books are made of wax. 

Your skin peels like a magnet hold

my hand I know you’re grey you

hold my hand. I like that song because

nobody’s really excited about surf city

everybody’s already there.

There is no north in Delaware. One

toothache. One Carolina. 

We weren’t even nesting at that point. Helen took the stage with Tom. There were pies and drinks. It was so unlike Cambodia.

We left. We left without training our eyes to the sundial, and they fixed upon tin and other flashing metals, wire, neon, neon wire tracing the shapes of beer bottles and golf balls.

If only we’d left earlier. I spilled bleach on the couch and you said that’s okay, we’d just get white pants that’d get whiter when we sat on the white couch. It was like fighting.

What if it was all like that — I grab a piece of twine and my fingers unravel, I retrace the wire pulling out of my throat.