You bare your cracked mouth
in a yellowing arc of bone.
I shine my worn eyes white
on you – pared and slender man,
and in your sockets’ sink-basin shadows
see my own drawn heart.
My gestures dwindle like the heart
of a skeleton; your broken mouth
makes my fingers half a shadow
of slim cigarette bone.
and I can’t wrap their secrets like a dead man
would – you rolled them tight and white.
R. Brookes McKenzie 