A crown of thorns
weighs down golden curls. Your name
scrawled in crimson across ashen slabs,
stacked up liked the disregarded crisps packets
that form crinkled mountains on glazed wooden tables
in pubs crammed with cadavers that make mist on the surface
on windows scratched with spider’s lace. Guilt that snakes its way
up your throat, as hot as summer’s oven, makes you choke
on the cragged edges of the icy marble words, that rolled
off your rough salmon tongue. They knocked me out,
a sparrow in flight, hit with the worn coating
of a damp pebble. Feathers that float like shattered sylphs
to roll around in Earth’s coarse blanket of soiled dirt.