Your Ruff Collar, My Millstone (redux)

We live under the heat dome.

I see you across the barren parklet.
You are eating bits of soft pink flesh.

My hair wilts.
Your curls frizz.

I lick the hot sauce off my fingers.
You yell that you are an arriviste.

I scream that I was once part of the noblesse oblige and waved banderitas.

You warble an Edith Piaf song.
I huff gas out of a brown paper bag.

You sing two registers too low.
My viscera gurgles. I pee my pants where I stand — mud puddles form around my feet.

Tomorrow you will sign away your inalienable rights for a used 78 rpm record of “Thee Infanticide Blues.”
I will strum The Hits of the Borscht Belt Songbook tonight on my ukulele.

The gloaming hour.

I leave a minute after you do.

You to your elevator shaft.
Me to my abandoned mine.

Dark. Wasteland.

We may meet again next year.

What I’m Reading:

When I go back
to my unhappiness, I’m sure
to cook it a meal. My sin?

I care about myself
without being kind to myself.

— Jessica Abughattas / “Eureka!”