Research has shown
that lithium
is the only drug
that guarantees a decrease
in suicide.

So slow the trajectory in which you came to me,
not simply difficult to see,
but difficult to identify:

felt the same as walking through a door and looking back to see a man approaching,
try to judge if he is close enough to hold it, not hold it, or give it the push
just enough for him to take advantage.

Awkward as a traffic light,
yellow,
too close to stop,
too far to go through.

Some people in my life are felt marker streaks,
they start so saturated
but fade to nothing as they advance.

You are the opposite:
slowly building from nothing,
continuing to get brighter,
containing more
color,
until the end.

Skin the color of fleshy burnt sienna
as if someone took the areola's border,
sewed it on the armpits

can't close eyes tight enough to cleanse the memory of
your face from my thoughts
regurgitating in endless loops of hula hoop champions.

I can't stop the dream –
(woman who looks eighteen, lips colored same as the pastel cheeks)
watching hot pink
bob bobbing.

Stupid ****:
if I'm raising armies to invade you with,
I clearly want you still.

I haven't cried in three days. The napkin-white petals,
an Alyssum White blanket of snow,
piebalded by Slipper Orchids,
flows beneath my skin
as if it were the thinnest layer of water
under oil.

The feeling is the consistency of pungent Valerian,
the active ingredient the smell
of well-matured cheese,
cuts the tops off  mountains
as it fills the bottoms of canyons
with asphalt.

It's given a brain back to this anencephaly.
Where there were stitched lips,
now only paper-heart kisses.

We've shared secrets no one else would ever want to know,
but now your brothel hair has become a nest for dead birds.

Where once you were a wet marsh,
perfumed in tangy musk,
you have now become a dry
steppe covered in rotting fish.

I'm writing acrostics of your name,
remembering you like discarded tire husks
on Arizona's August freeways.

And I'm still trying to figure out how to say that without feeling like a liar
Making up a screenplay in my head: dead
lead from the real way I wish to express, again
Exiting into your u-turn I always ******* dread: descend
Melodies I learned to hum when young
To someone now no one, flashes of red

You hummed them to me; child-like: off to bed
Implanting this seed in me 
I don't recall a single syllable you said
But still memories are melting me like butter on burnt bread
Talking to a ghost
Pointless...end.

They said your footprints
were still on the windowsill
when the authorities showed up

I wonder how long my hand prints will remain

as I lean out and see the last thing you ever saw
speed towards you
like that camera trick they use where the background speeds forward
but the person stands still

I feel you in my nose here
all that remains of you is
a scent of yellowed dime-store novel pages
and I can't help but agree
when scientists say that
our sense of smell is the one most closely tied
to our memories.

They always said you had an old soul

but I know better

You lived with the clarity of a newborn's eyes.

I'm reading the Codex Gigas,
one hundred and sixty pounds of flesh,
black hairy tongue,
penitent Battenti sponges staining the robe with blood,
stalking through Campania.

Crushed insect nests,
a shiver up the jaw from food not had in too long.
Squashing caterpillars,
the insides squirt from their ketchup-packet bodies
in a spray of slime-neon green.

Pheromone cream drips from your *****, I gag it down,
curdled milk-paste.
When pulling the dress down, one never knows
whether you will get a paper cut,
or a gaping jaw of hairy
life.

We all live like pigs, but need to clean up to appear to live
like everyone else appears to live when we visit them.

You rob me of myself; a teacher
walks into a food bank ashamed and finds his student working there.

My life experiences pile up like broken infant bones,
fragile phalanges of famine,
until all I add up to are decades of
Holodormo,
the Killing Hunger.

You hide in the sea,
I lick your left palm.