Secret Express

by Z.H. Gill

Filled the tub with hot oil, the type often defenestrated
from castle turrets, special ordered. Seeing a specialist
to get over my deadly flower allergy, which is to all
flowers, unfortunately. I love the dirt & ghouls found
only outside my building, only past 6PM. The automat
made a comeback on this side of town, I know now where
to get kisses tasting of emulsified tarragon-egg salad &
cold Ovaltine. I know the dark is inviting always, even
as it claims not to be so. I know the special door in-
side the train station which takes one to the secret express
        homing in on only the peppermint oil you knead into
        your temples & elbows each night & morning. Sometimes you’
        re so far away, the express taking hours or days, and I get all
        the thinking & itching time for which I could ever have any use.
        I see other passengers have joined me—whomever have you been
        rubbing up against? The silence of the carriage eclipses any ever
        between us. Which sucks. Because I figure us chumps could
        practice kissing in here, to pass the time, at least, if I can ever
        figure out how to break the ice—and also because, on a planet
        so rampant with blinding opportunity, that they are here at all,
        guided all the same—and that, lover, is not nothing!

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