I took the sun for a stroll,
bare feet pollinating with the lint from ornery houseshoes
as evidence, as repentance;
soles steeled to a dense crust
since June, her heat, and cancered bones
respited for eternity,
leaving me with unbleached linoleum,
a cheese experiment, and hangnails for hire.

I’d promised the chunked mud a week’s reprieve
from my shifty gait and tight tears;
granted it FMLA for torsioned pesticide grasses
and breath stolen from drop-dead bees.

I let the pavement file the gray and marigold calluses,
weaving the timbre of our wedding song over my tongue
between the dewy brush of the block’s evergreens.

The concrete croons its cracks with obituaries.

I’ve cheated and outlived our fifth cicada season.
I kick the molt skins to avenge your old squeamish curiosity
grinding them with my big toe,
their husks are flour like chapulines molidos
but grayer, hollow tombs, the wet flesh abandoned.

The lap home feels like another batch of your burnt caramel,
acrid familiarity and bittersweet smoke,
a puffy breeze from a kitchen towel dabbing at your eyes
before it’s wrung together and snapped at my behind.
I stifle my laughter with the syrup of your frustrated tears.

I reconvene with a salted saccharine;
our saffron porch is a desolate mosaic:
withered garden, cracked gnome,
unhinged house numbers.
My ears itch,
maybe you’re gossiping about me,
maybe I have my own sour tears to stew in alone.

I long for a grandchild-illustrator, a seer,
who could chalk graffiti our driveway
with mauve tulips and smiley junebugs,
capture a belly laugh to make the mangoes sweet again,
to brighten me and solitude’s graphite portrait on this porch swing
where you lulled me with your Parisian and Bluegrass dreams.

My leady ligaments sloth to our bedroom,
the wet drag of sullied feet against sticky floors
burdening each stubborn muscle.

I lie in your empty imprint on our tired mattress,
agridulce vinaigrette of my sweat and your kissed tears
caressing taut cracked lips; flimsy breaths
welcoming the weight and heat of your pout.
You tangle into every invasive root within me
sipping the last breath from my body.