move to the shade

a summer of toxic fumes coats your ribs
with a vengeance and the new year that is
merely the other side of the old year burns
its way through your skull and you stumble
into the coffee shop that is also a chemist that is
a record store up the escalator and the a/c
breeze stretches your mind to the very edge
of venom and all around ceramic dinosaurs
keep you in their stiff and deadly sights
and you breeze past the novelty mugs and the
vinyls sturdy against soft and worn carpet
walls and the fangs biting your mouth
bloody crumble into cheap and bitter
panic someone has started to let the
daylight in and your breathing attracts
the guys from security and the mugs
clatter get caught in your chest
cavity the space between them
remains dark under salt lamps
and under the dentist’s light

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Finn Bechtold is a writer based in Germany, after a few years of study in Auckland. She writes poems, flash fiction and short stories in English and German.