IN ARLES

ii. TRAGEDIES AT HALF PAST 9

1: 0: 29 P.M.

here's something like a tragedy:

sunday evenings finding you curled up tight against the plastic play schoolhouse in the corner of your backyard. your tongue sandpapery rough as the kitten mama says was too curious when you lick marmalade from a vein in your wrist and scrape your fingernails through the dirt / rub the hem of your sweater through the earth until you hold an eerie resemblance to ashes and you're begging the sun-splotched heavens to be born again. bathe yourself in the old algae-infested waterfall downtown til there's fish swarming in your vision and lily blossoms efflorescing at the apex of your thighs. a cleansing of the sins. perhaps shakespeare would've written a play about you, and for once you'd've been a god cradling the moon hot between your breasts but shakespeare's gone and dead, honey. they all are. you're here with the sun straining red like tea dripping through your eyelids and down your cheeks. you hear a frog croak. you're too late.

how tragic.