by Jadyn Marshall
Novocaine flooded their minds
As the car pulled up to the window,
(The bay window)
Breaking the roses’ necks and
Leaving silver lines of blood
On the paint job.
The lawn was already dying,
Long before the tires licked away
Matching panels of grass.
The wheels sampled the rocky road mulch:
Two obligatory rubber tongues
Catching drips.
Their grooves masticated
The worms and static stones,
Digesting soil and dust.
The headlights tore the sullied,
Noon-white siding,
Cleaving the dental work
Into a quartered grin.
The wipers manhandled
The flowerbed’s sniffles,
Pinching and grinding them
Into a frosted paste that
Skimmed the windshield.
Leaves sheathed the burnt-rose breeze,
Occasionally whimpering in the dusky distance.
Human rosebuds woke up
On a couch in the bay window room.
Their eyes tilted,
Searching for clouds in the trees
And for a moon in the yard.
Instead they found a windshield,
Cracked in the shape of a star factory.
