Salt is in your wounds;
they pour there,
they always do.

And yet we still cower
for the prospect of saline solutions
to cuts
(ha!) like it wasn’t always there.

(Because we don’t like things
overflowing;
or, maybe,
we don’t like to
lick your wounds!
and taste something too salty.)

So; All Hail!
All Hail!
Please, drop from the sky;
and give us packs
to press upon our bruises—
knowing that the jagged shards
will only pop them open
like treasure chests below the sand.

Give me a sign.
Give me a sign;
I beg.

Seriously, give me a sign—

(You do,)

I stick it in the mud
pointing south,
dip my fingers
into tears of red light,
and begin to write.

“All Hail!
All Hail!
Hail a taxi;
hail the clouds
and pray for ice.
I’m on my knees,
bruised and brimming
with saline—
give me something to soothe
my throat,
because that too is throbbing in pain.”

And it pours.
Oh, goodness— it pours.
It hails.
There is so much of it.
Like pebbles in the aquarium

(and we are the fish)

dancing along the floor
laughing
smiling
diluting salt.

Soon the laughter dies.
And I shiver.
You shiver too.
We shiver together
figures against the wind
bruised, bloody, frostbitten,
the sign covered in a sheen of ice,
pointing south—

Go south.
Go south.
Go south.

It is warmer there.