anna kiss

The Slaughter

the slaughter

has divided

my wrists

from my arms

in slices

as silk

and when she cries,

really she’s dreaming,

faster than the light can penetrate the shadows,

I stare,

she stares

silent and moving in milliseconds

between the faces and the mirrors

shattered –

grieving for the girl

lost in her own history

which has collided

at last

with her future

and both live now only in the memory of molecules,

where she still exists

as both the grown and the frozen.

committing to the present tense is always a suicide,

just as the past eats itself

just as the future will surely swallow its tail.