when you walked into the room
you smiled and blew out your breath
upwards, at the locks that impishly
strayed into the wide clear fields
of your forehead.

they puffed backwards, but danced
on the verge of mischievous descent
back down into your field of vision.

when you saw my dusty hands
you smiled and thought pastry-thoughts
and rumbled your tummy in ever-hope
of tidbits, delectable deliberate sweet nothings
such as you had become accustomed to
and assumed would be ever-there…

but your hair fell again
across your face and in your eyes
and it fractured your line of sight

…and thus it was that you failed
to notice that the dust on my hands
wasn’t flour at all

but just the remains of the body
cremated in the fires

of such hot indifference