There is a red sky peering through the shudders. My left foot taps ferociously; he is not telling me what I want to hear tonight. He nods off when I have my tense afterthoughts, where my most recent statement bounces off my head’s walls and echoes the basin of my eardrums; I fear that he thinks of me as nothing but the bitchery that my word’s resonance leaves behind. My cheeks stick from all the salt, and my eyes will be plump puff pastries by the time the sun caps on the dawn’s horizon. His shoulder was not free to lean on, much less cry on, but instead a shadow of pitilessness- so cold, he leaks into my own flesh! He relates to a stone’s degree, as I wallow in my stern conviction: I am too much for him to take and love in a deep love. I go for the doorknob leading me severed from bruise forever. But just short of the brass handle, I draw back from that other life, because of the hidden strained voice I would recognize from a child, the solo voice of a pack animal in it’s first lone moment. I am conquered as his alleviating eyes look toward me, as if I am a doe. I conclude these eyes are scarred I will not be in their peripheral again, and I forget my purple wounds.