I’d complain it’s too hot
But I know
you and you would tell me
that your skin was practically peeling off the
bone
yesterday.
And you wouldn’t remember the metal sign
with the dachshund cut out
in curly q’s
that marked the entrance to the hideout
where I am sweating into a trough now.
My skin flakes like bird feathers—
Down to the pebbles that support
my back about as well as that pillow top mattress
we got conned into buying last year—
you know,
the one that already has an imprint of you
two feet deep and dry desert dust in its veins like us
like the foreigners that it holds each night as they wish they
were from here.
Like us, like us,
Howling at silver plates and kicking over the bulbs of
the star on the mountain just to see them explode
glass firecrackers
in our faces.
