The Cherry Tree (August 2023)

 the morning after a night spent with you feels like a dreadful hangover, intoxicated by your drooping eyes and ever present melancholic demeanor, i let myself get whisked into a sadistic tennis match, exchanging prose like serves, and glances like strokes, we always end in a draw and I’m a sore loser if i don’t win. A sore loser rubbing my balmy palms along the sliver of space between us, unknowingly filling the space, and provoking the continuation of a cycle, i pray to god you didn’t realize how drunk i was, when i hopped into my car, in my underwear to grab you, i wasn’t that drunk, it was something else entirely, likely something much more incapacitating. They always say don’t drink and drive but i say keep me off the roads when i’m infatuated. Corner me with your iris, while i rip this bong, and slink back a little, i know it’s unattractive, my lack of self restraint, but you didn’t have to call for me, and i didn’t have to drive drunk in my underwear to come get you, i didn’t have to give you the pillow off my bed, even though you insisted against it, i don’t have to read you this but i probably will some day, and then you will stare at me with your eyes, like two huge cherry pits and you’ll shed a tear or two or tell me how no one writes for you. But did you know two cherry pits have enough cyanide in them to kill you? What a sweet way to die, eating the cherries never popping them, teasing, scraping, scribbling my signature in your journal upon your own request, you say i’ll be famous, i say that paper’s fodder, feed it to the fire for all i care, but we don’t have to keep fueling the flames, me tossing logs and you tossing twigs, it’s all the same when you tread too far and the forest burns down and there are no more cherry trees to begin with. And what if the soil spoils? What if we burn down our woods and can never plant anything there again, is it selfish how i spray my gusto, my libido like gasoline? over all the pretty smaller things? like the four leaf clovers and the dandelions? why are we arsonists?