two years in exile. i watch myself drink and dance and caress the warm secrets of strangers, Scarred tongue licking salt from desert fountains, doomed king, dust walker, scoundrel, thieving blood and honey from supple flesh to drag my dessication closer to the world before the wound. then cuban coffee, almond mesquite, a crashing amaranthine gut-punch of rising rivers and windspray and then there was YOU, your quick smile, your prescience, and I might have devoured you, and you might have nailed my tongue to your wall, but we had relinquished our pain in the sweat of the road, our bodies sweet and luminous together in the CRT sunset, our jabs gentle caresses, our truths as naked as our pleasure, and i knew as you gasped between my teeth that my tongue was no longer scarred.