Remnants

This was easy, then.

That May morning, waking up in a shuttered apartment
filled with soft gargoyles,
the scratchboard fractions
of who I was
staring back from a bathroom mirror;

the knowing grins on faces I never knew
or wanted to see again,

swollen pupils easing back into the carrion duties of addiction.

Yes, to exit was easy,
tiptoeing centuries over the bodies.

What are you, she asked, smiling.
Oh, let's see, I answered, as if this was some new detour.
German, Irish, Cherokee Indian, some other stuff.

What other stuff, she pressed, dying to state the eternal gotcha.

Martian, I said with a straight face, actually South Martian; that's where I get my curly hair.

This was two decades ago, when my currency was staked higher.
It got me somewhere with girls, on occasion.

All the wrong ones.