Love, the ultimate flophouse,
the dogged prayer-bin,
where you swap
scars
and hopes
and soiled dreams
pressed to the lungs of light,
where half-moon
fingernails clipped
and kept in urns
remind you that life
is a fleeting sideshow,
a strange affair
that you may be lucky enough
to share with a kindred flop-mate,
someone who understands
the veined beauty
of crumbling walls
and fated decay,
who knows
that the corpuscles of sun
radiating symmetry
through the cracks
in window-glass
serve not as answers
but as praise
to two people
sharing a room
and daring love
in the face
of inevitable ruin.
