How to be a Scoundrel

He saw her

first on the streets.

Spring –

a joy to remember

that you’re not

so far removed from

an adolescent hormone-cocktail

and spaghetti strap voodoo,

pale winter thighs.

Her contoured clavicles cluttered

with moles like the

constellation Cassiopeia, crushed him,

collapsed his lungs by sheer force and heft of hips,

lips, his diaphragm spasms and skips.

Since he couldn’t look at her

he tilted his eyes

toward yesterday’s taffeta skyline,

head held at 45 degrees by tented fingertips.

Pushing a pen knife past his own scalene muscle

until it just clicked the spinal cord,

he half-moon

rotated his wrist,

severing external carotid artery,

thyroid cartilage, larynx, superior belly of omohyoid,

and jugular.

He knew the slowing sporadic blood-spurts

from his dedicated cardiac system

would say more than contorted vocal cords.

“Thump spray thump spray.”

I hope the stains on your spring days

and sundress

never wash out.