cactus bush

My desensitized was desensitized,

and I had a nightmare of monstrous proportions.

You were hanging upside down on a cactus bush,

crucified, your skin sticky red,

your head cradled by thorns.

Your fingers had been brutalized,

ground like beef.

There was a plantation house nearby, and I went for help. (Though, surely, you were already dead.) I walked

in easily. I took the stairs, because I knew you were on the top floor.

On the third landing, a child was sent

to tell me to clean my feet.

I told him I had

or that they’d never been dirty.

(I can’t remember which.)

My feet had been in your prickly garden beneath your bleeding, had stepped in the berries that fell from the

cactus bush, that stuck themselves there to the arch of my foot. Before the child came, I ate the berries,

hungry, and licked clean my steps.

Your death made me selfish.

But as the child led me up the stairs,

I found myself back out

where you were hanging like that—

naked, embarrassing me and yourself.

It was not long before shame gave way,

my immortality threatened by your body’s vitality.

And then I feared everyone, everything.

And when I turned around I saw that

the child had been sent down from the house

with a hook in his back,

not because he believed my lie

but as a consequence of it.

(I still carry it in the red of my tongue.)

I’ve never seen a punishment quite that

eloquent or quite that effective;

my marveling only stood to emphasize my crime.