Ashes To Ashes

Summer careens with cicada trills
all 'round my thick head and heart.

Solitary on a fire trail,
a map and half a biscuit in my hands.
Just me, the sun leaping beneath my breasts,
the tankers on the sliver of horizon
(I can erase them with my thumb, I squint and say
to no-one and nothing)
I arrived here on feet, I will leave here on feet.
I'll take a leaf and a flower.
I toy with the flower, I twist it through my hair.

***

the flower is toxic
my heart shuts down
I crawl to the bathroom
and make desperate calls
to a husband at work
to a father screening calls
to a friend on a dancefloor

the chill of fingertips on the plastic keypad is too cold
like a spy's vodka
and cools even further, stills my face into a glue
into a taxidermy grimace.
The final leap of the sun under my breasts hangs,
hangs like a minor note strung between choruses.

***

They spread my ash
from a mediocre outcrop
thinking a sea bed will mean something
profound.

I burrow into their pores and make them each
a fine suit of armor.
I give them my blue lips, my hung heart
as a gift.