Red Riding Hood
I knew this one was trouble,
and sober,
I could not have convinced myself
that the night would end in anything
but castastrophe,
but if youth is fuse waiting to be lit,
then liquor is the gasoline
that burns down the forest,
because it doesn’t care about the trees.
and i don’t know if it was the red hair
or the blue eyes
or the tattoo of a skeleton
she wore on her sleeve,
but I fell for her
like a man falling through ice
and into a freezing of green.
And I made myself charming.
I told her lies.
I recite poems.
I danced with her
on a floor littered with cigarettes
and dust.
I wanted to be whatever fairy tale
she needed to believe in
to take her away
from the unspoken sadness
I saw in her eyes.
and it worked. she told me
she knew I was full of shit,
but thought I was sweet enough to kiss.
And so for one mad and clumsy night
of frenzied flesh and perfumed skin,
we fucked
in the backseat of her car.
in a small thicket of trees.
on an earth without a name.
and whatever pleasure was gleaned
from her sweet peas,
was lost as soon as it was found.
and the rain would not let me sleep,
and the alcohol could not save me
from the sadness
that entered the car
as she slept in my arms,
a lost child
in the wilderness,
and me,
part wolf, part hunter,
part nobody
ready to release her back into the wild
with nothing
but the clothes
she came in.
