Ritual Killing

It is hard to imagine a blood sacrifice
in a winter-locked midwestern town.
A mittened-Montezuma reaching into
a prostrate man's chest, huddled masses
watching from below, shivering and sipping cocoa? No.

The gods are just as cruel at this latitude, but perhaps
not so appeased by gory showmanship. They prefer our hearts
where they are, beating and much more vulnerable.
In the social circles of gods, the northern breeds
frown on the bawdy tastes of their equatorial cousins. "Mortal suffering thrives
under several feet of snow and ice," they laugh and toast their ambrosia.

Their infinite wisdom is infinitely clear at 6 a.m., headed to work,
infinitely hungover and hungry. The unpublished pauper, living
downtown Nowhere proper, keeps trying to stop her
from disappearing.

The winter sky darkens and lowers itself. Night comes
home from work earlier and earlier each day. The sun,
not wanting to stray between the gods and their playthings,
skirts to the periphery, packs its things, and takes a long vacation.

Coming in to the bar and shaking off the snow, he sees the back of a woman's head
and nostalgia is a cold hand reaching into his chest. Nostalgia, surgical in its precision,
its selection of memory to taunt and torture. The woman turns and becomes a stranger.

The flu pinned him to the couch for a weekend. Christmas may or may not have happened.
A friend explained that he's tired of feeling like a shoe that's lost its twin.
News arrived that cancer claimed a relative after a long fight. A year died.

The rituals people endure to see the next day, and the day after that.
Tearing out our hearts and thrusting them to the firmament and expecting mercy,
how entertaining it must be to watch from above.