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No time for a shower. Grilled cheese for lunch, if they were lucky. Too late for order-in groceries. Could she order pizza? She could ask him to pick something up, but his trips to the grocery store always took twice as long and came with a bombardment of questions via text: “Which isle is that in again? Did you want the organic or the regular? What size diapers does she wear?” (Maybe if you changed them more often, you’d know!) And that was if he thought to text.
The tight press of bodies around him were just shapes, smelling of sweat and blood and the tang of stale urine. He wrinkled his nose in disgust, stifling a gag. The smell was on him now, like a baptism in a tainted stream that could not be washed by any number of holy prayers. The bodies around him shifted and murmured. They were animals in a cage, grumbling over the pangs of hunger and thirst.
Liquid language
drips from lips.
The lies we speak,
they come in sips.
Can we find rest
for our wandering hearts,
to be satisfied
in playing our parts?
“You’re a strange creature!”
The alien said
as he dropped from the sky
to land on my head.
Silent observer,
you stand with your list
and check all the things
that humans have missed.
Verdant greens that smell so sweet,
in summer air ‘neath cloudless heat…
Set my sail upon the wind
and drift to distant shores;
So let my heart be with thee…
Banana peels and pumpkin guts,
And rotted eggs that smell like butts;
Mushy mushrooms and moldy bread,
A hairy, slimy, lettuce head.
Melted trash in a noonday sun,
Microwave tuna overdone;
Steamed spinach and expired stew,
That’s what you smell like through and through.
Highlight the wind when I breathe,
The sun as I tilt my head,
The plants when I want to feed
And earth when I join the dead…