New teenagers in loose jeans with rings in their tongues
Tell her she is brave for sliding one thin hand across the counter
To touch the double snakes on greasy, laminated paper,
For baring her left elbow to be bitten by black cobras
Growing, scale by scale, tooth by tooth onto her arm,
Soft white skin around her wrist encircled by their bodies.
She grips that thought with bloodless knuckles, like she grips the
Arm of her seat, as if it were a friend, because they had stepped
out for a smoke, and were oblivious, wearing their
shaved eyebrows and hot blue hair like kings wore crowns.
So alone, she feels the buzz inside her bones, tastes iron on her teeth
watches as needle-born reptiles sink into permanence in her.