Billboards

A Haibun

I come home from the nightclub with the cloying ethanol lingering within my faux fur coat. The billboards are all scratched up, and the bus shelters are smashed up. One heel snapped and I’m riding and falling like a frantic shore. The porch light is off — nobody home to find me stuffing the new mouth ulcer with saltwater. I take the can of cherryade out of the fridge and take a swig — spitting out the cigarette butts that swim at the bottom. I’m a childless woman returning to a place with expectancy. The bathwater is tepid — swirls of bath oil like ice cream. Holding my nose, I slip underneath and ingest more saltwater, hoping to loosen a filling or two — blue jelly pills whisk me away into a vision of numbed unconsciousness.

Red berry moon is too punch drunk to give me my cicada summer with your ribcage