Locking down clamps of this box
Fetid air circles its blue tongue
Whispering, ‘remember me’
Nails drive hard, cold talons
Splinter feeble edges keeping
Dark at bay, cracked light has
Few seconds to breathe,
Bones feel soft inside this space
No place for brittle nerves
Snapped twigs break on the outside,
How white skin milks without
Sun and embers of moon to free
Limbs from time to time,
Small distance musty as museums
With far less old worldly things
To entertain.

When Bella Came Last

Crowds of people gather at Café Thirty,
faces lit with that winter glow
snacking on Cajun chicken and
swirling a glass of dry red,
full with lubricated grins.

Bella also sits at Café Thirty,
sipping iced tea, amber liquid bathes,
tea leaves grainy, floating in her glass.
She sits lonely on a wooden chair
hard frame pressing into her back,
she scowls slightly but remains seated
watching a fly tracing the rim
of her glass.

She observes the room,
eyes stretch open, aching for a morsel
of someone else’s life…
A tiny snippet would do.
Stray eyelash falls to her thumb,
skin peels from the corner of
her thumbnail, chewed nervously
by her mouth.

Bella’s meal arrives,
even the waiter ignores her
when she tells him the sautéed
champignons are cold.
She refrains from speaking louder
and reaches for her tea, only to find
the fly has marked the edge of her glass.

She sighs, dipping her index into the tea
circling her finger in lukewarm liquid,
hunched shoulders reveal
the inertia of it all.
She is full with emptiness
Empty stomach.
Empty eyes.
Empty mouth.