Come Find Me Louise.

Our weather shrunken hearts
are such thin pieces of meat
stretched out on rotisseries
over a fire, fueled by coals
forged from trouble
a year or more passed.
The sum of our parts.
We count.
And add up to the decimal point.

So I ask,
what is it that keeps us
going
in this landscape,
this ash,
this gray dawn and
early night,
this day and age.
the many images meaning
more and less than anything
before them.

I love to watch you
when you think I do
not see.
I do.

We enter the Christmas
season
and wish well for
our families,
respectively.
Trees and sights
and sounds,
ferris wheels and children,
the screams of
laughter cut the night
like the smile of a moon.

You say you see me
and you know my heart
when I think it is all
hidden up,
tucked away,
and that you see me,
you love me.

Are we good for
anything but warfare?

If you are here,
we must be.

The fire still roasts
our two hearts
on a spit,
turning ever slow,
the skin of them tightening
and drying out,
only a matter of time
before they decide
that we smell done,
pull us off,
and eat us both.

Dripping off their lips
into the dust.

We return.

I love watching you from here.