Fruitcake and sludge love, a love-smudge, dried crust
crusting my nails. Few ghosts come back with pride,

with tales. On our last shift you were tied, trussed,
crotch-rope spreading your pudendal cleft wide

under your scrubs. Release, in all its forms:
from me, from work, that cum-sticky murk smell,

cirque-slush fog. I know how a nurse transforms
with bliss of rope kissing her, “pumpkin shell.”

Bad joke. “Peter, eat her.” Very well: last
kiss, last shift through your cottons. Moist as cake,

as fruit — as the mistake we want and yearn
for, crusts our nails. In the future our past

falls from us — Call this the sort of mistake
that leaves behind only ghost-tales, rope-burn.