it’s the twelfth of can’t-remember as i find myself marveling at the soft cadence of your affection fluttering against my cheek in faint echoes of conjured memories, and crafted illusions which bind me in turn, to the hollow chambers of misfiring synapses and daisy-chained coaxials tethering my lips to this anvil-shaped heart. the steam rises in wispy forms from places where all is void and memories are married with dreams becoming those smiling faces left in the picture frame i brought home from the store, smudged by the cellophane, and now conceived whole by the very absence of a loving progeny to call my own - pieces of me left to bloom amidst the shadows exalting themselves sub rosa within the absence of light. it is a moment to taste the waters and wade out until my bristly chin is beguiled by the ripples born of *ulacia's stone finally reaching the bottom, and cry out little pieces of nothingness to bounce off of the shoreline, if only to sate the grumbling deception that my tears could float here without end or amen, isolated within these painful shapes of you to clot the cursive wounds all the while imploring of elysium that one day i shall awaken to a strange smell and realize . . . that i am burning.