Finger Stain by Alex Pauley
CW: Suicide, violence
that cinderblock in front
of the plank to keep
animals from the crawlspace
from rummaging beneath our feet
we can share more than spit and sheets
foile a’ deux
a telegraph sending screams
bad persons or human beings
lay at dragon’s feet
all treasured secrets
the silent phones are symphonies
of crashing metal drones
and your choreographed perjuries
distilled liquids from your breathing
dripped into my ears like mercury
but you call it honey
something to eat
in the afterlife
a fever for your dreams restless legs, restless things
nobody is with anyone that’s how it seems
notes from him
folded and flexing, origami wings
I can see how you built cathedrals
with the yarn and strings
a cat’s cradle
my hand caught
finding out what truth
really means
you breathe in gasps of mercury
tucked away in your lungs
your weapons
the mood swings
taking the temperature of things
but you told me everything
crossing your arms
and your heart
we know what that means
we don’t know a father figure from a crucifix
and pleasure can have its rips
like vinyl
the needle skips
pierce through the skin and tell me this,
“tell me what you’ve hid?”
pressure and pleasure pressing lips
This all has its ups and downs and its morphine drips but…
a beautiful plant with poisonous leaves
my cyanide palette
and a Caravaggio canvas
the betrayal
Prussian Blue
the antidote
to my heavy metal poisoning
it could be bliss
and here I am
still
in the garden eating
don’t desecrate our special place
the silhouette of your lips
and the negative of the photos
using shadow clocks
distrust technology
computer screens
the light that falls upon
this timeline’s all wrong
flipping over an hourglass
time told on dials, spilling sands
recoil, snakelike and taste the tail
infinite regress
you’d call that progress
the path beaten down
in the same places in his mind
where he is watching
this hole it surely eats
as I take me piece by piece by piece by piece by piece
your help I don’t need
like to take my time
Is that still suicide?
not a car crash
but piece by piece our precious failures
like diamonds rings
crushed beneath time
under the hourglass sands
I keep them alive
under the house
in the crawlspace
I feed them blueberries by hand
until my fingers stain
Alex Pauley is a writer from Springfield Missouri, studied creative writing at Missouri State.