you're the same as I remembered you:
eyes like daggers
swim towards my barefeet
it's almost summer again: it's too hot to hold you, or
anyone.
sighs about tomorrow: "you're just going to fall asleep again."
I avoid the mess and go straight for the spill: lips. eyes. brain.
you're the lipstick on my coffee cup, the smell of smoke after a house burns down.
she screams about the horses, the costumes, the memories:
I tell her to be quiet.
"just shut your mouth! just shut your god ****** mouth!" and again,
"you're hideous" in a different way.
the anger moistened breath (shouting)
released her from the frenzy of being herself.
standing in front of you, arms shaved and knees lotioned:
"thank you", from the voice of insanity,
signed on the back of a handmade book
with your name on it. exit: left ear right ear left ear right ear left here.
Words like ghosts they go straight through her.
lack of empathy lack of mourning lack of desire lack of satisfaction
it all goes down the drain: in this house
(clogged with hair [it doesn't matter who's, so don't ask]).
the boredom cries out (again) with freedom
and instead we call it "relaxation".
(things we think
but we never think)
to say: I lost the meaning of vacation counting license plates on the way to Texas.
(would bring back more than just the dead)
it would bring us back to dead,
and death would say
(something ringing in our ears) that we understand.
that we understand the things we want to,
whatever they may be,
and then maybe: in death
we can find peace.