A large crash;
Everything comes at once,
Drags you by your chest
and pulls you in,
Makes you relive every moment
And with scents
Breaking past your hyposmia,
Troubled voices crowding
In your ears, in your throat,
And you remember it all
Thumping in your chest,
Making you so ill,
Always sick, always prying
At your weakened body,
But you’ll forget it again,
Hoping it goes away,
And it will always find you
In hot flashes,
To drag you by your feet,
Asking you to see again.

I used to remember in images,
Movies, flipbooks, flying across my eyes,
But then I saw haze,
And the foggy screens became thicker,
So the grime and dust became darkness,
And through the darkness became words,
Disconnected, discolored, disjointed
Streams of words,
And so all my memories lost
Vision, became nothing but recalled statements,
So I could tell you yes it happened,
But how or why or what was sifted through a blender,
Chunked into a garbage disposal, and lost somewhere,
yes, the memory exists as a statement,
A declaration it occurred but oh so loosely,
You can’t be sure of it.

I wish to find some respite
In arms like yours,
though, safer,
much safer,
As it is much too likely if they were yours,
I would feel my breath leave
in sharp bellows of agony,
my lungs would decompress
into shriveled bags,
and I'd pray to forget you
all over again.

Haven't you heard
that breaking and entering is an offense
and that maybe every attempt
you make to barge into me,
every door you bust open,
every single step forward
into my soul, my energy,
against my will, is trespassing,
and I'll be ******
if you think I won't
take care of a wiley trespasser
like you.

Yes, does the mother bird sing
to her sleeping young.
Yes, does she wake them
each morning, with a full heart,
aware they may not make it,
and yet she sings with gusto.

She opens herself fully to her loved ones
because even if they pass,
even if they fly too short or plummet
from the well-kept nest,
it was always worth the morning song
and always were her children worthy of her love.

I dreamt that I saw you
barreling towards me in a sea of people,
and with your arm extended out
to touch me, pushing past me,
and you looked back
with bewildered eyes,
scared, confused,
but not knowing;
I only recognized you when I awoke,
and I'm sure
you'd never remember who I was.

...Whose voice is that?

She likes to ask me this
when I finally lift my fingers up,
and sometimes I have to tell myself
I'm not quite sure anymore
but at least she's honest.