The Flavor of Soil

The Flavor of Soil

I don't hold my breath as much as decide to stop breathing, my sin scented by leather and struggle and remnants of peaty single-malt exhalations that once fogged the morning mirror. What’s the flavor of soil? Mud-pie wedding cakes when you married me daily and my teeth sparked on quarry pebbles. Turbid creek-water where you dared us to skinny-dip and make love. Honeymoon beach sand. Pine ash raining on our daughter's funeral. Passover Maror more bitter with silence, distance. Tire-spun road salt clouds behind your moving van. “Make a fucking choice, for once!” fills my head. So, I inhale.