Come to me, infinity. Bring every kind you hold. Hand me the keys to fantasies that sprawl as they unfold.

Run to me, infinity. Spare not a beat or breath. Deliver me eternity so I will not know death.

Sing to me, infinity. Roll music off your tongue. Our lips have waited patiently for infinity to come.

Breaths caught like lumps of bread; hiccups hop, and jump, and spread from throat to lungs with bated dread. My mind turns to Ohio.

Stomachs turn like private sorrow, churn and burn and fear tomorrow; for either side, it’s hard to swallow the color of Ohio.

Drinks poured like loaded guns, cocked, rocked, shot, and flung. Show me the man who says he’s won, and I’ll show you Ohio.

The sugar scrub reminds me of the sand between our toes; thrown back to when (on wooden decks, as summer came to close) we set up chairs, and passed around a light for our cigars, puffed clouds into the balmy night, laughed hard into the stars. Our voices echoed out to sea, and bounced upon the waves. Though long thought lost, it came to be our laughter was engraved in sentimental memories, brought forth by little more than everyday simplicities that reminisce the shore.

What is it you see when I bare myself, torn open, pins holding back the flesh, heart pulsing, shuddering in electric air, lungs shivering, exposed and rapid… I strain to see you, to read your expression. I scream out for it. What is it you see?

What is it you hear when I pour and pull the music from my throat, dig words out my gums from the raw, sharp root, eyes watering, glistened with agony; I’m desperate for it to sound like the truth… I cover my face, striving to zero-in on your voice. I beg for you to tell me. What is it you hear?

What is it you feel when I force your hand through my chest, ribs cracking, organs displaced, fingers splitting through sticky blood…. I wince, twisting your knuckles to pull you deeper; even if it kills me, I need to know what it is you feel inside.

Sometimes I’ll leave it there for days, scared to touch it, for if I do I know how I’ll be tempted – no, demanded by the crystal to stuff it full of ice lace its skin with sweetness, and douse with golden poison… straining into its smaller cousin – decadent, and invitingly chilled – a single, large cube begs to crack, as I have, under the spill of viscous concoction.

I raise my glass to the maraschino and I, drowning in our sorrows.