I wrote this to try out some "in medias res" type story telling, so it may seem jumbled.

Also I was very drunk when I wrote the first version.

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I.

I could use a drink

At least an order of magnitude stronger

Than the strongest handle of vodka

Olive branches breaking and a frown in every frame

And I'm out on technicality so rent'll need to wait

I'm robust enough, I'll pump blood to my fingers

Gnawing my own heart, fleeing these first weeks of September

Where best intentions have started to slowly, painfully corrode

and scarlet sunsets will soon find me in my beach house, alone

       Overcome with fever    
              in the midst of teeth and tempest    

I'm not one to propose on the contrived sense of a plan

But driving away now would leave empty gas cans

tied with string to bumper in a twisted unwed reminder

That no matter where we are the sun will set behind us

Dashing toward the night with our fingers tightly laced

as most ominous fins rise and begin to give chase

III.

I promise, mountains on the horizon are nothing to me

Yet I suspect you only see the view from inside shark's teeth.

So now I know you'd prefer a home on secluded beach front

where we aren't kept in hiding in fear of the hunt

        but I'm keeping you sane for now, dammit.    

I feel a breeze

From shattered bedroom windows

and like lightning, like mirage fading away

I begin to feel a pulse in everything you say.

You, rubbing madly at the tan line from your ring,

ask me the time since your alarm refused to sing.

I bite my tongue,

  “Time only betrays me; I don’t remember my last kiss,     

                     but cannot forget yours.”

This isn't a fancy, or some weak willed would-be whim

I wish to keep me sane for now and to keep you away from him.

Have another glass of sweet, puckering white wine

As I still stare at the stars in search of some sign.

My fevered, shaking fingers graze your clenching jaw

as I gaze in your direction, your pure scarlet penumbra.

Deep set eyes staring somehow beyond my own

begging me to listen, that I need to be shown

       Where exactly on the map         

                the teeth will swallow us whole