Nightlight

Nightlight
by Sam Piccone
Your lip,
  the big bottom one,
  cradling a coffee cup all the way
  past the boldface letters,
has been leaking for a while.
Invisible blood down by the chin;
      looks like a run
               -on
               Kool-
               Aid stain.
       Wet, like the avocado metaphors
       across the fragments of stories.
Stories about the french fry crunch
of brittle fingers,
and how they have never touched anything strong,
like a house of cantaloupe brick.
Stories of fragile sweat,
the awkward groping for ripeness in tiny beds,
and how the more the teeth were bared,
the less the skin was bruised.