The stories line her freckles like pixie lights,

Like a cluster of dim stars in an unpainted sky

on another cold night.

The caress of summer snow huddles close

to the aged men on the glistening pavements;

They grumble, but they're secretly happy —

the cherishing of collected touches from unhappier times.

How unholy of their hymns

To burn holes in her chest and like that,

never getting healed and pale blue.

Their words, how sinful upon the feet of flowers.

Their songs, how tragic to chap her lips rheumatic.

Yet, they smile.

Their thin smiles sculpted on their white faces.

She takes a long drag on a cigar:

A ghost of grey lingers

in the thick air — the songs buzz through.

They sing of rotten time and stormy skies;

They laugh at unholy love and burning hearts;

They talk about the dying sun.

To them, life's blasphemous enough to die upon flowers.

But she knows better.

Life's another whisper like a ghost of a cigar

That comes each champagne night, lingers

long, and then vanishes early into the swooshing air.

A red stream of everything finds its way through her void heart.

The land's growing, but the bodies wasted.

And like a mistake thin as her silk robe —

everything slips away like another nightmare.

She watches, and they wait.

The seasons go off the key,

The lovers huddle close in the rain.

Cold sweaters warm in grief;

Torn sleeves brimming with inked tattoos —

and like a fire of rain kisses, the smoke fades

into the cold summer breeze.

The old men are fast asleep.

Her cigar dies at half past twelve.

Ice-white walls whisper death.

The cathedrals quiet the birds with a hush of never looking back again.

Her museum of aching art loses its way

into the curling screams of her razor cuts.

Her heart races colder; their blood stills in the dark.

A lone sketch in charcoal dust fades upon the wasted.

The songs end a hopeless orchestra of storms.

But she knows better.

When the time comes,

all will rise in the colors

of the falling sun, and

there will be broad daylight

upon the bloodless wasted.