Campden Mill

It’s how they find her. Bleeding out
liver-first, slow-dancing, guilt
scuffed blue on the phantom gravestone.
Gospel swaying from those spidered rafters,
the ones they prayed for, those veins
cracked and bleeding through the attic beams.
Her sinkhole hopelessness. The nameless dead.

My crimson snow, my endless night,
the would-be epidemic of your eyes on the road.
The kitchen prayer of no casualties, the house
abandoned down the lane: you. Interminably you, baby.
They won’t find a cure by the church gates
but sweetheart, darling, it’s me on your killing floor—