zippo slight of hand

she stops fingering pearl buttons

to hurl the speaker
into the face of her dressing mirror

when robert plant’s voice
bleeds onto her black dress

that he’s going to california
with an aching
in his heart

“You don’t know fuck!”
she screams as

glass shatters perpetually
into crime scene fragments
upon last year’s unswept floors

the moment seeing fit
to make her an undertaker again

she buried
the king and queen of cool
alive

in the same casket
beneath white metal desert windmills
rosary beads
wrapping their clasped hands

bodies still adorned with

his fedora
and
her spiked heels

swearing never to visit the grave
pretending it was never real

because he was already still
on the bottom
of someone else’s
just beneath the hollywood sign pool

belly full of xanax
liver pickled with vodka
tongue swollen with loathing
gun chambered heart choked with lies
record collection pawned
pockets full of weighty justifications

refusing to watch him die

“Yeah, how’s that working out for you, baby?’

the devil asks
doorway leaning
as he lights a cigarette
his
zippo slight of hand
blurring her sight

“Reliving it night after night…”