Bed Fest - Slaughter Beach, Dog

You wake up

You’re sweating

You know you should’ve stayed out

But it’s dad’s car

And with one more you wouldn’t have cleared the roundabout

Safe now.

It’s over

Clammy slumber detoxing

The warm haze is long gone

And it’s as bad a time as any to think about him

White caps to gray sky and you took all that Dramamine

The worse end of a bad dream when you lost your heart at 17

Consigned it to your brother

He swam it two miles out off shore

It’s aching in his hands, pining from the ocean floor

Fingers laced around those veins, casualty of a cold campaign

The day he left you were ensnared

Your soul held in suspension there

Maybe he’s the blood and ink;

The time you waste at the bathroom sink

You learned to decorate his hell

With the awful things you tell yourself

(You lost your way.)

Dark cloud in a black hole

Your veins all swell, the words appear

You bleed out on your bedsheets

When you say out loud that you can’t stay here