Brink

I know it looks like the spiders have spread their legs
and are treading iris in your grey,
but in reality, this is a slipknot that
will shorten every song on our playlist
by twenty seconds.
We will be taken in, cuffed for our crimes
and our conversations during commercial breaks.
The stars will spread out
like skin cancer
and that night you hold so tightly to
will become just another back-alley mural
painted over.

Stranger

She is a red M&M bleaching out in a sidewalk puddle,
steps taken over and around candy-coat color.

I screen my calls for gunshot victims.
They whisper secrets followed by last-known addresses
of the estranged.

I write each of their lasts on a yellow post-it
and press them onto the inside of my closet doors,
then close them.