Sweet whiskey breath
darling, put away your knife,
its glint consumes the page
and frightens me hard -
 
It was the ghost spirits
dancing in through the antlers,
from the headlights of her
boyfriend's car on the last
page of Kowalski’s story
that haunted me. The noir
of that moment, crack!
 
A rough dance, but I felt it
when all of your beauty sagged
to the interstate, you, the Queen
of the Midwest never cowering
in our fictional, friction affair.