Post-Mortem

Have I forgotten my glasses?

Or is this parking lot blurry because tears

are racing each other down the blush

on my cheekbones, desperate

to reach my smeared lipstick whose imprint

has been repeatedly recreated on the rim

of a brand new wine glass? Maybe I am swimming

in merlot without goggles, staining

my pink hand-me-down dress and yellowed

vinyl seats deep red. What if an officer

had rushed to my car and demanded to know

why I’m hurt? Well, it isn't my

blood, but it did belong to a family

of grapes once. Am I a murderer

for soaking in their insides? Then I must ask

the question of innocence to all my villains.

I did paint a bullseye between my

eyebrows and wave each man through my

arms with a satin cape I made by hand.

I dyed it a dazzling crimson squeezed

from the throat of the girl I used to be. She

locked her ankles, drug her feet and

cried, so I grabbed her by the price tag

in her ear and cut it, demanding

to know why she insisted on collecting dust

in the clearance aisle of a thrift store.

She did not understand the question.

I stare in my rearview

the same way I had glared at my

adolescent mirror, covered in old,

half-peeling stickers and orange cat fur,

before I scratched her out of my

reflection with a penny I found

heads up in a parking lot. I had her

cremated and barely feigned a funeral.

My mother cried while she withered

like my father’s rosemary plant, whose green

powdered leaves offered generous puffs of

protection until I clipped them one by one with

rusted sewing scissors. I watched them turn brown

and shrivel, pleased at the thought of the surrounding

weeds thriving on their post-mortem excretions.