Nausea

A fist sized chunk of swirling green and black

malachite sits on my windowsill,

half-polished.

Its top is nearly harder than my skull, and

though it may not look it from the

surface, the underbelly can be

easily scratched with a nail.

People back in the day used to say the stone

protected them from evil, that it

absorbs pain.

“You know, the afterlife is crusted with

the stuff,” the clerk said, his

laden arm outstretched

over the counter.

I promised myself a while ago that I wouldn’t

etch your name into its mineral

achilles' heel.

But my bed has been empty since you left, and my

blunt nails have scraped against its hollow guts

so many times they’ve acquired a rather

rotten look from my spelling.

Someone far away once decided to stop their

refinement early, put down their

leather and rouge,

And send off this hungry chunk of void to

be sold to me for nineteen dollars;

marked down due to its

weak base.

The clerk had looked at me quite pointedly and said,

“Green and black are the colors of love.

Show yourself some love, dear.”

I suppose I should have looked up the symptoms

of malachite poisoning before I tried

to grind up and swallow

the afterlife.