certain metaphorical memoirs

there are only five miles to the nearest alchemist. and in my valise the pinkest of pink ribbons and a jar of sweet, sticky honey. and i'm reaching for you along dusty tracks and in angel skies and in smudges and whisperings of exotic skin smoothings.

oh, yes, i have dreamed of this. and there have been so many rest stops along the way, my angel dove, and thinking of you at every dirty, greasy, desperation-filled diner.

and everywhere the caged birds sing their mournful songs in lonely night and smog-filled day. as though the more loudly, the longer, the more tumescent the song, the greater the freedom. and many a bird dying in mid-warble and trying so hard to make half-things whole.

and when you set the caged bird free, will its song sound as sweet, my love, as it did when it was singing to be free? and where will we be, my love, if we both run away? and who would we be if we stayed? and did you ever want to love something so badly that to do so would crush the life and breath and blood from its fine, yellow feathers?

and when you kneel and suck the nectar from between my sweet, sticky thighs, darling one, will you, then, be king? and when i grind my hips into yours will the world stop spinning? it's not, you know, an easy question.

still, the ribbon is for you, sweet boy, and i want you, and only you to tug the ends and take it out. and when my hair brushes your hand, you'll know it was me, and only me, that set the caged bird free.

but this is not a love story.

(look instead for a cheap melodrama with a two-ply tissue ending, where the destination keeps hoisting baggage over its shoulder and moving out of my reach).

but, come now, there's a chance that somehow, tonight, you'll find a good cigar, just the right single-malt and a whore willing to grant you your illusion. and who knows, just maybe, by morning the chill might have warmed enough to make you want to do it all again on a day just as vapid.

because we do so want to believe in something whole, don't we?