.

.

Harold loves Maude

and Maude loves Harold.

with the stench of the love on our fingers

our inner tongues of petal flowers

all say the same except some have even

lost some petals.

In the nude in the night of statues

marble skin cadavers

hoot and creak and sing

like whales in the arctic

whose sonar powers emit rays that stun their prey

like unicorn bats in the ocean.

Love stunned, love stuns,

Love is a stunning collection of glass figurines,

a glass menagerie of glass unicorns with broken legs

and horns that are actually teeth in the market of my dream all of my teeth

kept falling out like papers and we couldn’t decide which way to go,

drifting in the tides for two hundred years,

I clenched in my fists

the paper flower teeth

until they wilted

and we lay down

like Madeinusa,

and scattered them around us

like bits of shattered rainbow

like salt

or potatoes

to keep us from being violated

by the rough hands of others.

At the checkout counter she asked me for my number

I said Oh no, it’s not Oceania, my name is Lauren

these are my flowers, these are my teeth,

this is my dream where the semi-truck below me goes careening

Up the wrong side of the highway and I’m on the hood.

At the last minute just before the apocalypse after which is only the apocalypse

then I am fifteen again

on the back of Jacob

who was the first boy I ever loved

who is carrying me into the nighttime

and it is summertime

and it is nighttime

and it is summertime

and it is nighttime

and it is summertime

for billions of years.

.