I’m nothing but. 

 

Slimy hot rain 

sticking clothes to bones while 

slipping down sweaty cracks and crevices 

in since-been stained skin. 

 

I turn and see him barely beneath  

all the grime that’s covered his crow’s feet 

and made his smile seem a sickly shadow 

of who it used to be.  

 

A wary glance across the street finds a stray dog 

nuzzling through garbage for food,  

the same place we scrounge for dollar bills.  

 

I know the dirt-dappled animal  

looks no different from our own  

tattered skeletons, ribs  

poking out of paper-thin skin,  

his freckles mere fleas on different fur, 

wet whores kicked out of stores,  

wondering what’s in store 

for us.  

 

I’ve learned by now which cars to stop 

and which to let run by.  

The ones with tinted windows 

that scoop you up and let you die  

in hotels somewhere. 

Leave your body for housekeeping to find 

and they never act surprised  

when they walk into a room 

and find a slut face down on the mattress 

with a contusion in a rotting apple-core skull.  

Par for the course in these parts 

 

We’ve learned that by now, he and I. 

We know which cars to pass us by; 

we know tinted windows mean an endless night,  

a family bumper sticker means a knife  

sticking out of your spine. 

 

He sends me curious dark eyes. 

He’s so much more pretty  

than I give him credit for. 

 

It’s too dark in the midst of a sultry night 

to see his pupils against the backdrop 

of an ink-drawn sky.  

 

And I hear him say, in a sly 

voice. “Do you want this one?  

Or is it mine?” 

 

Even though we both see the tinted windows 

so I know it’s a friendly invitation to die.