It was just God, my Machete, and I the night
I cut the roses to lightning.

At least this is what I tell the saloon-men and the salon-men alike
As they inhale my burning tobacco,
Twilight incense that quickly chokes the square wooden room.
No one complains.
It chases away the lingering stench of yesterday's flowers,
and they're grateful for that.

This is how it always begins:
Because they are grateful, they think me great, and I am obliged to tell the lie.
It's an easy exhale.
I held the metal, the metal held God, and God held Me

Sometimes it's an axe I held, sometimes a knife, maybe even an arrow
If it's Sunday afternoon and they're placid enough to believe anything.
You can make anything true on a hot porch in Summer,
Even the love of a woman.
You can even make the woman leave.

Lavender and sage wafting in from the gardens that smell like you.
The ice in the tea is melting faster than I can drink it.
You put sage on the roast and now dinner smells like you.
Maybe you just smell like dinner.

I sigh.
This is how it always begins.
I leave before the entire house smells like you cooking
Your meat.

/

It was just God, my Machete, You, and I

the night I split the roses to lightning.
I held my Machete, my Machete held you, and you held me

God watched from the herb garden.
I think he smelled like dinner that night, too.

You stood behind me, to the right
I'm left-handed and you wanted to avoid the swing.
You didn't cry but I felt your frown like my own tight skin
The roses were your centerpiece.

You were never one for petals but your fingers made sepals
When they tried to make steeples 
instead.

nstead you folded your fingers into piano keys
and played a thunderstorm against your own opposing palms

I looked over my right shoulder and you nodded.

Your thumbs and index fingers made a gaping mouth
That you opened and closed for the shadows
While I let gravity pull my Machete back down.

The roses suffered horribly, I tell the saloon-men with a gap-toothed grin.
You could smell them screaming for miles. The thorns just got sharper, after all, as I cut.
They pricked themselves to death.

Sweat ran down my face like rivers looking for the ocean
but you had not cried out
the salt.
I smiled, and created two parenthetical tributaries as recompense.

My lips bracketed, you finally moved to my left side.

You folded your fingers into house keys and opened the front door.
You looked back over your right shoulder and I nodded.
You smiled apple blossoms beneath a bleeding forehead,
Then faded back into the shiplap walls.