Party

There is a woman resting against the bark
of a sakura tree with her eyes closed.
She is awake but needs a break from all
the sunlight. There are tallies marked on the sheath
of her sword for the people she has killed
along her way. She knows there is a better day
ahead of her where she can barely see it,
but she can feel it in the knots that won’t untangle
from the chaos in her gut.

There is a dog being fed in secret every night
at a small clearing where two brothers go
at a time when both their parents know
they’re sleeping. It’s fangs were barely
in its head, and it smelled like it was
almost dead, so they walked it all the way
across the train tracks.

There is a poster of a woman on the wall
always lit up by the blue light of his screens.
She’s hardly wearing anything,
and the man who hung her neatly barley
notices it hasn’t walked away, but sometimes
on a lonely day he stares into her eyes
like she is with him. It always ends below her
with a faint mark on the paint
that he covers with a blanket to forget.

There is a star in the sky made up of nightmares
and regret where the emptiness is heavy set,
and the four of them arrive there in their sleep.
A kind of dream that’s broken free and everything
feels real until it isn’t.
She cuts the villains with her blade while the brothers
heal her in the shade, and the other hides
until the fighting is over, but points in the direction
where the realm is at its worst, and there’s a chance
there is a cure for every borderline disaster
that could burst.