He's So Heavy

By Rebecca L. Morrison

I am mapped red-hot

in Tanzania,

in Sicily.

I hibernate

in the Hawaiian tropics.

The sludge I spew turns

to smoke,

to opium,

to pure Afghani heroin,

and it trills by the

squalid droplet to

brim my bathroom sink.

Crazed, I limp

with each blushing sun,

across the savage tile to

chase his majesty’s gremlins

from the crevices of my

girlish dimples, my

listless lids.

He swore they’d

never know his teeth,

yet they’re familiar

with his inbred gums.

Mine bleed with gingivitis.

And we joust,

and we self-medicate,

and we ape the adults we’ve seen

propped against podiums,

the twenty-somethings we’ve seen

with pupils dilated.

He warbled a tinny calypso,

looted me from the flotsam,

overturned the sunken ship,

splintered my ribs. Under rocks

and reefs, we retrieved his

golden timepiece, his heirloom

from the ocean’s floor.

He swore he’d seen the sea,

but time is for tadpoles and

our parents’ friends. We wish it

upon our worst enemies, then

cringe at their naked wrists.

I am naked when the water turns briny, and

I am bare when you kick off your sneakers,

and the flickering of a candle

and the realization that the wind

has compromised it before we could

fish the methadone from our pockets.