I remember you said something like,
“the sun doesn’t set anywhere unless it sets in Tucson,”
that dusk when we sat on the hood of my car,
folded into each other like the specks of white
inside the stitches of denim jeans.

That was back when we used to laugh at how
we had become

who parents and lambs
and various shades of pure white
stayed up late wringing their hands over.

That was back when we smiling
nailed judgements by their carpenter
hands to the floorboards under the carpet.

They could eat our bread bodies for all we cared,
drink our wine blood.

But, stars die all the time.

Now it’s ten months past
“you ain’t got nothing I never had,”
and all I can do

is press my hot forehead
into the inside of a dirty window

and squint

at how people find it romantic
when the blue sky turns deep purple

like a swollen bruise.