The countryside stinks of cow hide, manure, and discontented fatherhood
Great big waves of blonde grain, deceivingly plush, drink up the earth
And the cows chew their cud in a dull synchronicity
Clouds laze across the dusky pink sky in popcorned patterns
And the young man and his girl walk alongside the fields,
Crisp starched arm locked in her calico creased elbow
The heels of his boots strike the earth as she pads gently,
Hair trapped beneath a scarf
Her eyes bear a sadness, deep like the roots of a neuron branching into her collar, her heart, her lungs,
More acidic than her own roiling stomach (despite the indigestion)
It speaks of a future with the parrotfish ladies who flutter their fins, their tails,
Clucking their beaks into the void of their stagnant briny pool
In foggy glass bottles of rose water,
Dyed pink with carmine that stains angry lace antimacassars and permeates stale cotton bedsheets,
Drowning in this congealed gel ten years past expiry
Laying to sleep at night as the boa constrictor, smooth and glossy, muscles its way across the room,
Beady eyes flicking to spot dust on the floors, a dead housefly on the bookshelf
It punishes her with a hearty shriek and a stab of the elusive tongue
That tastes of herbs and roast chicken dinner, knives on the table
Done up in trussing like a pig for pork,
Legs twitching like the old man’s eye while the blood rushes to its head.
Squealing until its throat gets slit in a spurt of scarlet
Reminiscent of the mousey school teacher’s patent leather shoes
They squealed, too she remembers solemnly
The young man’s arm moves and his heat dissipates from her own
She squirms as he laces his fingers with hers,
Pressing the sharp edges of her engagement ring into her knobby fingers
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