Cherry

I write my ‘i’s differently now —your letters etched themselves into my blood I eat everything with chili that burning sting is close enough to your kiss I abandoned the blade. You’d be proud— though only because we meet every night, dream or not Why do you haunt me, why? but still, I tail behind your cherry mirage Lost in this desert, I crawl beneath a sun that brands skin your smiling eyes lurk in the harsh glare— ghost-lit nightstand in my tonic gin billowing gray of exhaled nicotine cobwebbed corner in that one drawer only you and I know exist