Your fingernails are tinted red— red deep as the heart inside a lacquered Shokado box into which the cook has nestled three perfect lengths of roasted eel on steamed rice. This close to death, the body still wants to sink into some bed of pleasure; remembers how it gave itself so many times, ate and drank as if all the birds still carried in their mouths the keys of tomorrow. How they chimed but nothing bled or hurt, dusk to dawn, dawn to dusk.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.