tasting the cold steel of regret i lap up the blood that covers my neck stumbling in the streets numb, dementia brain. the darkness coils the alleyways. pythons, i am strangled and squeezed snapped closed like the tightest lock against concrete cold sidewalk i see death in the shape of a deer slipping between headstones of a catholic cemetery she passes beyond the gates to my lifeless body, and presses her nose against me. and then, i am a vagabond ghost.