Jay likes the dead buildings 

The boilers groaning 
like cyborg organs 

The silverfish 
wriggling 

their malignant 
calligraphy 

His favorite 
is the derelict hospital 

where we pretend 
to be ill 

To have beautiful 
lesions 

in our brains 
that make the surgeons 

gouge out their eyes 

He’s got his black towels 

to spread 
on the gurney 

Candles from 
his mother’s 

bath bomb stash 

that smell of 
tortured apples 

I bite the inside 
of my cheek 

As Stell says 

You really just 
have to play along 

Because 
their imagination sucks 

and the whole thing 
will collapse if you poke it 

Jay tastes 
like a plant 

like a pastel drawing 
in a boring textbook 

of a deadly thing