Museum

This is a monument. It was born from us a town illegitimate; we never married. A great hall of artifacts, plucked still-gunked from our livers, Others clean-picked from our birdy bones. Over there you had loved me, there I spooled my sobs. Here, the streetcar - windows fogged with our laughs. We would visit this dead museum, with crumpled dollars to smash through the box-office slats. We would laugh at the silly, dead fossils. Now I am alone, inhabiting it like restless taxidermy. I call you through each dusty chamber, Every dull ceramic and jaded mask. I regress to a baby one hundred miles a moment, My nightgown heavy and helplessly slumping down my shoulders And not even your body: dried, tattooed, is on display. Your insides are not carefully dissected, labelled in a looming case. Your wings and your pulsing pink eyes lay on no proud board, Your legs are not zip-tied, toes not tagged and inkily named. You are not Americana Exotica - You are more elusive. You're exploring one thousand Arabias While I breathe sarcophagus air, Befriend the flogged and leathered skins. There is only my lonely feet.