. (or: when I heard my voice come from his mouth) .
At first, it was flattery—
the way he wore his collar the same way I do,
the way he started lighting my brand of cigarettes,
the way his laugh hit the same register
I used to throw like a knife across rooms.
I caught him reading my journal once—
not with guilt, but reverence.
“I like the way your thoughts bleed,”
he said, closing the leather cover like scripture.
He stopped asking me questions.
He already knew the answers.
My shirts disappeared one by one.
Then my habits.
Then my silences.
I watched him pour bourbon
with the same three-count I perfected in 1994.
Watched him cross his legs just so,
quote my warnings back to me
as if they were lessons he taught himself.
He ****** me like a rehearsal.
And I let him—God help me—
because some part of me believed
that to be repeated is to be remembered.
But memory is a shallow grave.
One night,
he answered the phone with my cadence.
“This is he,” he said—
voice dry as an autumn branch.
And for a second,
even I believed him.
I didn’t confront him.
I just started talking less.
He filled the air like a flood.
My presence became parentheses.
In bed,
he started calling me old man—
not as a kink,
but as a countdown.
I smiled.
But it tasted like rust.
The boy I devoured
was digesting me back.
And prophecy, that silent ******,
licked its lips
and kept watching.
Part III in the myth of Chronogamy is where the myth fractures beneath the surface—where affection curdles into imitation, and love begins to echo like a warning. The younger lover no longer learns; he absorbs. He doesn’t become like the older man—he becomes him, piece by piece, until the original feels like a fading draft.
The artistic intent here is to explore the horror of being mirrored, not by admiration, but by erasure. This is identity theft as seduction—a coup not of empire, but of essence. The power dynamic shifts so gradually it masquerades as romance, even as it hollows out the narrator’s core.
It’s no longer a relationship—it’s a rehearsal. And the older man is beginning to forget his lines.
The Chronogamy Collection:
https://hellopoetry.com/collection/136301/chronogamy/