Cities are Flammable

Jan 26

The girls you know live on a knife edge
a hand grasped tight around a thin blade
it bites, creating new lines
new borders, new roads
the blood is the colour of maps
where do you sing?
is your voice shrill like bitter morning crows?
you have beauty
I have modesty 
there’s no mans land between,
I wonder who’ll step first
first to put a fresh boot print into the sand
to etch size nine silhouettes 
into the quilted tapestries of sand
like a map indentation, like scores of little cuts
stabbed repeatedly into collected palms