The Waffle House near me is closing for the winter weather and that may be the scariest thing I've ever seen

You can't sit down anymore

Where the crimson sea splashed

It's ruby waters across your thighs,

And dripped maliciously into your panties.

You can't walk either, with those stallion stillettos.

Your toes fell off in the early aughts 

And you can't recall

If it was the shoes or your insulin dose.

Sometimes you remember standing

At attention for the pledge in elementary school

With a tiny hand over a heart that didn't know the burn of patriotism

Or the wash of choice 

You recline gingerly in the leather chair

That moans in acceptance your Vermillion pants, and snip your amputated feet into cobwebbed slippers

And breathe one tremulous breath.

Because you give of yourself to the body that can not hold itself together,

And your atoms supplicantly pray to each other

For the note of sleep promised in dreams.