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You think now you might be quite good at Trivial Pursuit, but all those friends are still imaginary; all the history questions have the same answer –  monsters and monstrosities are memories the world keeps forgetting ­– another incident added to the detritus of lives that are underdone, frozen in the middle microwave meals for two devoured by one // This year’s harvest is predominately made up of husks, rotten yet syrupy like the lemon lip gloss you begged your mum for when you were thirteen because it was iridescent, speaking to your sweaty palmed soul of kisses you’d never had // Each morning starts with scraping the edge of a porridge bowl sticky with too much honey disguising how you smoke your taste buds numb – Every sweet thought we’ve ever shared is not enough to stop the flames from reaching our front doors whilst we slumber – They told us that “in the grand scheme of things atrocities are at an all-time low, if you look at the percentages…” the population is rising faster than the bile foaming from your impatient stomach // His favourites were lemon drops or chocolate limes, the way the wrappers winked at you from the glove compartment is the same either way, just like the way he died of diabetes complications // Welcome to the Sewer State where the sky is only blue to appease our curiosity, distracting from the scum we wade in on a day to day basis. Your commute adds to the filth even though you promised not to renege on that cycle to work scheme and like that long suffering re-resurrected only to be killed again cat, looking up will surely kill us // Envious is the pier which reaches out to the sea only to by sullied by footprints which will never wash away with the tide // Husband number two is waiting for you to get back from the school run and see to you over the kitchen counter before he trudges to the office, this is a cure for his bimonthly hangover from a night out with the boys: you, bent over the breakfast nook – which you convinced yourself would fill the void carved out by years of heteronormative advertisements – you, bent over the breakfast nook yearning for the coffee across the way which is surely tepid by now, wishing you hadn’t given up your anthropological career which made you hate humanity, but not as much as this does // If there were gods they stopped watching after we blamed serpents and seductions that hiss for knowledge (most of which we ignore anyway) for all our self-loathings // You first knew sin when you had to stop doing cartwheels in your summer dress in case the boys caught a glimpse of My Little Pony knickers and got distracted. It took you years to decipher that distracted is a code for aroused, a code like “What were you wearing”; “How many drinks”; “Did you…” blink NO in bloody Morse Code if your mouth was too preoccupied to say // fermented pineapple is not the same as a piña colada; consent is not a spectrum determined by consciousness. We are sick of your selective amnesia // Welcome to the Sewer State where you could close your eyes and think of England, those rolling pastures and dairymaids; alternatively, look up, the sky is the most remarkable shade of blue today, don’t you think // don’t you think, don’t you dare think // -. --- // That/ If/ When/ How/ this happens does and did not matter; all our presumptuous language joins in the opalescent overflow of our skin and bones which the earth discards as if it out grew us – with no one there to note how the serpentinian metaphor avenges itself before biting its own tail again as some other race claims this Sewer State, naming it Eden in another tongue which finds its own clever ways to turn a phrase – we are just capable enough to hope they might forge more successful synonyms and non-verbal dialects for no // “How do you sell the future” they ask you in the board room you lie // That/ If/ When/ How/ this happens does and did not matter; it will be okay because it has to be // -. --- // don’t think about it