The Crocodilian Desert

The Crocodilian Desert

She can’t stand the visage of extermination

Can’t stand it when loss is a tambourine clanging in her

Ear

Can’t stand it when mortality corrodes her

Eyes

Can’t stand it when death follows her

Home

Walking through a crocodilian desert

Bleached armadillo carcass on her left

Like leather shells abandoned on a waterless beach

Trails

Teeth fangs crusted in sand – those gritty incisors

Watch your step

Don’t look at me that way

They can’t hear you, ya know

Back on the urban homestead

The torn white plastic bag dances like a ghost in the street, caught

By the wind

Will it be okay I want it to be okay please be okay

A car swerves to miss the gust filled beast

A hollow moon rises above the trees

You leak tears for those that don’t love you

You cry for your silent, foreign momma

You wipe the slick snot from your nose and you weep

For her

For yourself

You crave self-pity, ooze regret like a toxic glandular slime

It fills your body and rots you from the inside

Out

I got out

I abandoned the crocodilian desert, left the sand spinning

From my heels

Heart striking fast in my chest, my legs pounding

Running through a thousand sunsets I see the forest

I taste the nourishing, warm mist - it’s inches from me now