James; Smoke Signals

Catching embers with our lower lips,
we shared misery spread out
like a tablecloth;
a decoration we’d place our survival upon
and consume only meager portions of,
in a flavor
easily familiarized.

Sitting in the makeshift triage
framed by citronella blowtorches
like the missing muscle masses
we hauled in zip-loc bags
filled with formaldehyde
could be replaced if one
simply held the hand of another
with the same injury.

Excavating our former battlefields,
I reminisce on future incantations;

hope we never shake arrowheads from our hair
to plunge the Arctic Ocean through each other
by carving our sins into chalkboards,

hope we never stretch coitus across centuries
where the middle three hundred years
of bad sex gets blamed on evil spirits,

hope I never confess to you in sentiments
stolen from movies you’ve never seen,
hope you never write poems about me
being a nostalgia junkie
track marks pacing through photo albums,
or lament how my emotional state gets annexed
by every song in the vault of my memory bank

but mostly, I hope when I muster the intestine
to stomach the firebrand
working towards my esophagus
to blow smoke signals through phone lines,
you’ll receive them
or return them at your earliest convenience.