what madness does find me at this hour
before the sun rises and our shame sleeps
that i might find myself in a lackadaisical daze
drifting in and out of awareness of the world around me
and on the shores of my consciousness
do i find a wayward scrap of a memory lost long ago
where i saw you standing in the moonlight

and you did dance, as i recall

staring emptily into the abyss of the soul
astounded at its chasms and respiratory failures
an inability to breathe in the toxicity of subconscious desire
and drowning in its own shallow loneliness

a raft was built
to carry me on the flow of memory and pain
that do associate itself with your images
the ones that had tried to be forgotten
and twisted through the entirety of time
now seem like a movie playing backwards
where the ****** was two strangers walking away from one another
never to have known each other again