Memorial Postcard

Though no fault of our own,
we let our grave doubts make us specular and drastic.
We strapped the cone speech mechanism
to our faces in order to magnify our howls
as we roamed the streets in search of friends.
The way flowers grew on the bark of trees
like a pink fungus, or the way the bus driver's tatooed,
meaty hand slapped the windshield, shattering it.
All we needed was a week away from the tilted landscape
of the jaundiced ritzy city. On the edges
of town, the tumult of despair grew into a sickening
dose of gunk and frappe. We donned foil suits,
and hard plastic hats, yet the rays of the
putrid sun still penetrated our protective layers,
and delivered a hard citrus punch that knocked
our breath away. We staggered into the train
station where the oily mist couldn't envelop us
in the tunnel, which was sterile. There, we found
a television mounted high up on the wall in one
of the darkened, cavernous, subterranean rooms.
The broadcast was full of smudged, staticky
images of fires in a deep, wooded area with
flashes of soot-stained deer and skeletal trees.
We'll be okay, we just miss you, a lot.