A warped mirror perhaps?
My face always twisted,
always grimacing behind a dry beam.
Two Tylenols are never enough.

Ella.
A lump caught in my throat.  
Her scent walks by,
uninvited, yet welcomed.

A blurred outline,
a cutout blocking the light.
I yearn to sweat nightmares
out of my pores.

At night, her voice still fogs
the thick wall of silence—
muffled.
“Are you listening?”
Obscured echoes stir
down the pit of this endless night.

Tulips grow somewhere
on the side of the bed,
where it whirrs and beeps,
and reeks of alcohol.  
But the night is ever still,
unperturbed, as it sleeps in my arms.

Murmurs drift like dust motes,
caught in a sunbeam—

Ella.
I chase shadows of her laughter,
fading out against gushing white noise.  
Fingers twitch to speak,
for words are somehow
lost in static.

The walls hum a song,
croaking with hurt it sounds—
“Stay with me,” it pleads,
but my indifference swallows
the words.

In the spaces between breaths,
I linger suspended.
Ella might be digging me out.