I think of you on days the odor of water makes me dry-heave.

Our photographs still throw me, offguard, into flashbulb memories. Every detail etched into my brain with a hot scalpel.

This isn’t an apology, this is a confession. I am not guilty in my eyes.

That was my hollow lava, this is what it crystallized into. Look at it, laugh at it, break it, keep it. My words were only meant to be beautiful in someone else’s eyes. In your eyes.

Drown my breath in a tub of sand, tell me everything that isn’t alright.

You can weave our veins into a dystopian novel, stamp it with 'fiction' and we can pretend it never happened.

The ordinary incinerated in your palms and I’m reeling from this hamartia.

Paint your carcinogens on my skin, carve them into my bones, punch them onto my eyes. Hold these hands one more time and feed me a blatant lie.

Feed me anything that’ll help me swallow these choked up cries.

I’ve wondered how the others were, how you were.

Was it art when you wrapped blindfolds around their necks?

What was it to them? How were they dying?

How am I dying?

Because I wake up in the odd hours, my chest feeling like it’s soaked in salt water,

and you’re standing at the edge of my bed,

with a mug of poison,

smiling,

telling me it’s okay,

it’s just a bad dream,

here, I made some coffee.

And I believe you.