All of us; you, Aaron Kent, and I

spread ourselves across the mattress

where we read ergodic fiction to each other –

where she lay the golden chariot,

alchemy by alchemist,

unenviable task of poisoning

the dinner party. We bought a simile,

like we had bought a mouse –

petted, fed, hygienic

born to serve a different purpose.

We, all Aaron, carried him in our arms,

our wasted arms in nuclear unrest,

and dug lead into turf

as we pressed its aching body

into a shoebox and begged

each other for entropy. The tone

of conversation had changed

and the split had guaranteed doubt.

I’ve seen myself against a foreign backdrop

like the breast of a white swan

paralysed by the lines and ripples

elegantly stamped on water’s canopy,

where the drinks are quaffed

before the bruschetta stuffed.

Three of us, the inheritance of each other,

like buds snatching for the sun,

sent to follow a slope

so weak so long so dark

against the paleness that eats the very best

of every silver lining etched in the folds

of heavy cloth / case. I still hear them,

us, myself in every quaint out-dated

piano solo of a rehearsed broken

moonlight sonata, like a sober actor

playing drunk – the chimes jangling

somewhere in absentia,

the simile sleeping on the crook of midnight,

a desperation becoming faint. I overcame

and landed with tender spring

between the three of us

there, between the Godlessness of uncertainty.