When the mail came,
we rubbed our hands together
like flies.
A parcel of Grandmother’s love:
Cookies and candy,
tea and playing cards.
Cross-legged on the floor
I spread the cards
divining,
looking for my suit and number,
and death’s herald,
but all I found was your likeness
in the Queen of Hearts.
You slid the King to me,
but I preferred the Joker
dragging the stone.
It was the last time
you rolled your eyes
at me.
Civilized, we sat,
our chairs scraping
the hardwood floors.
I was haunted furniture
gathering dust,
barking to the old Gods
living between
cracks
in the walls,
while you coloured
the dead crows on my shoulders.
Your camera built
my good side
dressed in your wool sweater.
What did you see
crouching next to me?
The wolf-soul, or just
those red bricks, and
blue paint peeling out of frame?
The shutter closed
and the flash seared
a blue phosphene dot,
into my eyes, closed,
far away in the dark,
and then I was gone.
That night you slept,
with Orion’s belt
shining through the bedroom window,
while I watched my shadow shifting
in your dumpster-mirror
whispering
to the ghosts of dead leaves
dancing on my altar.
A thicket grew
in the blackness between us,
and the smell of hemlock
needles twisting
synapses. You woke
to howling.
Naked,
on all fours, with
canines bared
I crawled over you.
an unchained dog—
bearded, otherwise,
a hairless animal
breathing on your face. Then,
I didn’t understand your tears,
but still I licked them up.