I Keep A Menagerie of Men’s Hearts on My Mantle

I.

I killed a man in a county

whose name I forget—

It started out as mere obsession—something my therapist calls:

religious sublimation.

I was a cheap thrill seeker—

and He was the Denali

on acid. My therapist says—

maybe you should just forget.

—but I’ve already forgotten, and His memory—behind the barrel of His own Smith and Wesson. One hand in my pocket—I laugh as I bring the chamber around

and lock it in place.

I never hesitate,

—my Russian-Red lipstick stained on His cheek.

II.

He washed me away—slow at first, until my psyche was fully eroded—but awake.

I was the other woman—to her.

The woman who knew,

but still—poured a Scotch over neat,

when he came home smelling of sex

and Listerine.

The harlequin who carried

His grandmother’s diamond—

and a serrated Santoku

under the pillow.

—I carved this smile myself.

He created a prison for me to inhabit—

a web I spun into fairy dust.

And I bought it with my sanity.

Yet—I admit

—when it was good,

—it was really good.

But I was so vain.

His power. His wealth—

I was twenty-nine and forest-green

in an arena of fire.

III.

He was another God

I dreamt into existence—

a Fata Morgana on the thirsted lips

of a question.

Two-faced, one cheek to the mirrors edge—

I see myself,

precocious and twenty-something still—

a meadow of crimson clovers

on the dawn of unseasoned-spring.

Other times—blood-shot eyes

and purpled bruises rouged

in bronzer—my neck

between His teeth.

—Maybe the persistence

of memory is mere pestilence to the human psyche—

and I’m sat here pretty

in my own sanctification—

because maybe Jesus—

was just another man.

—crowned by the minds of the sick

and lonely, and maybe we’re all just idealists

—creating wine out of water,

—and dying of thirst

in the process.