Constellations for Butchers

On Tuesdays, the butcher has blood on his apron, and his eyes
are the only lavender thing in the plastic-colored market. So, I fall in love
with Alaskan salmon. He offers me a bacon-wrapped filet shaped like a heart.

He slaps a 50% off sticker on it and grins. He has two silver teeth, miniature, full
moons of enchanted gravity. “Jackpot,” I whisper, and he winks. He licks his lips
like they are full of gravy. The frozen section feels too much like my mother

and the fruit section like a bible slap falling on my head. The redundant aisles want
to send me back to earth, but I lay on the butcher’s slicing machine. I fall for a new
world behind the glass of his meat display case. The butcher’s eyes are always on my body.

His hands are my hands in my warm bath water thickened with Epsom, soft
like blood. Wednesdays, he performs his cutting on stage in the center of the store
under the fluorescent lights. I stand in the front row for the meat magician.

His knives glisten in my starstruck eyes. I am very much a lamb. I lick the tattoo
on his neck. The big dipper, a ladle where I rest my hunger. The sharp taste
of his body arrives in my brain like a strobe light. His icy hands surge me back to life.