discovery of the romance between bodies.

it’s a man’s painted fingernails, the ones red as birthday balloons, swelling and sultry to burst. it’s the brackish black of grease from a bicycle chain, an illusion waxed and waned like two moons like eyes opening, closing, getting caught up in the crescents fresh in between. it’s mean, it’s brilliant, it’s cruel. it’s fixed like the gears, the ones no longer turning, the ones flicked off like a light bulb revealing fire’s light and a cycle’s crash. it’s a mess of hair sticky with blood, red as a birthday balloon but deflated, tired and out of air, and the hand running through the tousle, the tussle of a woman over a man, her whole hands painted by the rush from his head, the whisper of her lips in apology she couldn’t save him couldn’t save herself couldn’t save anyone in the busy streets they pass in masses, matted, effete. it’s in the silence of the streets, every street in the first a.m. daylight and the daylight and the rush of the five o’clock hour, drained, sour, and in the moons of midnight, the missing moons of midnight. it’s a closing remark at a commencement speech, a designed kind of motivation, a propelling stillness into pavement, lurched like the sudden shift of a shifter not shifting, but lifting the gears into the spokes leaving no one speaking. it’s the sadness of two wheels no longer turning.

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