So mildly sweet that she can taste it–
like how strawberries sometimes taste like blood.
The rain cleanses the surrounding air
of the vileness of his perfume,
the one he uses to lure foolish women.
Still, she cannot help but wonder why
the crimson roses oozing rapidly out of his ivory shirt
speak to her of the flowers he once gave her backstage
before she performed “On My Own” on Broadway.
He told her to make him cry.
Mizpah, he whispered to her then,
“The Lord watch between me and thee,
when we are absent one from another.”
The Lord watches as she
grew a garden in her own chest
at a leisurely pace every year.
She comforts herself with the fact
that she has finally made him cry
by luring him to a puddled field,
her right hand caressing his body gently,
her left
holding a mirror shard
that tore flesh and made it ooze
roses.
