7.5.2015

The last elephant died in a zoo in Arizona, across the street from the dental office specializing in incisor implants and Novocaine overdoses. She stared across the street as ten men tried to push and pull the elephant onto an oversized stretcher while she felt her hands play inside the sandy blonde hair of the man in the chair. He let his deep set eyes finally rest under her touch, closing the lids over the murky waters hidden inside of them. The mountain range extending from his nose to the purse on his lips was too delicious to leave untouched and she let her fingers wander between the valleys and hills.

"She cried for months before she died, didn't she?" He asked.

"She needed attention. Nobody wants to die alone even when it's for the best that they do."

"I want to die right here." He was nervous. The blood in his veins shook when the needle went in and began to pulse to where she attached the other end to the center of her heart. They shared grief and blood and the death of the elephant. Their blood spooled back and forth between them as the elephant was dragged away.

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red cars

The strings are cut, my nails are trimmed
and every day my hair grows inch by inch.

The red balloons drifted through the
April clouds, pulsed with the atmosphere

and popped before an unfamiliar God could
push them back down to Earth, to my arms.

Each fire engine siren grabs my still protruding belly,
screams into my ears like I screamed

on the bathroom floor as the tile
bloomed scarlet beneath me. I run.

To feed the demons, to shush them and
to obliterate the remaining fat that

grew with the early springtime bud.
One more mile. One more sprint.

One more inch to pull myself through
until my heart stops breaking.

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