There's a trickling underneath the stairs
Where the babies all used to pile up and lay
There are two cameras
Taking pictures of each other
At five-second intervals.

And when the film runs out,
We can take off our clothes
And run screaming outside,
Lips waving and chests bare.

There are twelve snakes circling,
Leaving their skins all around.
There's a face in broken glass.
The girl is still brushing her hair,
Seeing herself in the shards on the wall.

They're still getting ready.
Always getting ready.

I'll stay in your face, she said,
Staring at his reflection,
Until you say my name the way you used to
And stop speaking in generalizations.

He pulled his jacket from beneath a pile of her clothes,
Stepping over glass
And excuses.
This has got to stop, he said, loading his pockets with both.

What makes you so sure it's begun?
Her eyes finding him,
Firing threats,
As she turned on her chair to get up.

All the noise was unwinding,
In that one featured bliss.
Flocks of magpies hit the skies
And all our jewelry went missing.

We found ways to be guilty,
Because it made us feel whole.

It's the chemist who whispers
When his wife comes to see him
He looks guiltily at petri dishes
And test tubes, and flasks
And renews a promise
To be home for dinner.

What did you expect out of all of this?
What did you really want to know?

The biggest trial is always
The hardest to avoid
And in all honest, you failed me,
She said
With your pockets full,
And your hands empty.

But the better ones will wrap around
Like papery snake skin to my angles
Peel and come with me to dream, she said.
And I will cut you, she said, because I taste good
In those slightly obscene ways.