The poisoning isn't always painful
like a rattlesnake or arsenic.
Sometimes,
it is a whisper,
soft and sweet,
like a lullaby that sings "carbon monoxide,"
a bit too much fun too quickly
as you slip into a black overdose,
a poppy-soaked dreamland.
Sometimes,
it is a fragment of reality
that was real once
but exists now as some new non-truth,
the thing you want to hear
picked out of the words spoken,
a misguided make-believe.
Sometimes,
it is a song we both love
the night we heard it
and the memory I built around it,
a cloying clawing
corrupting with a buzz and haze,
a saccharine toxin to the imagination.